


The Avery Mystery

by Ledona



Category: Moonbeam City
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-07
Updated: 2017-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-05 12:26:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5375144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ledona/pseuds/Ledona
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sparks Avery, the world's worst pop sensation, stands accused of murder. Can Rad help the fallen star clear his name?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Star is Torn

"...and  _that's_ why you don't have fans anymore."

"Fans." Those had existed for Avery, once upon a time.

His full name was Sparks Avery, but he was known by his last name, since so many people in Moonbeam City had weird first names, a dull one was more interesting. With his super-awesome singing voice, he had skyrocketed to fame and become a shining, boring star in a sky full of crazies.

But now things were... _different_ , as he struggled to pay attention to his agent/producer/insane bane of his existence, Jazz Cox. He continued making eye contact with her, while using his mouth to try and find the end of the crazy straw he was drinking out of.

Unfortunately, the straw was just too crazy. He might never find the opening.

"Avery, your voice sounds like a goat being penetrated by an accordion!...Are you even listening to me?"

"Yee-hum."

"Really? Because it looks more like you're trying to fellate plastic intestines."

_Intestines? Ew._ He tossed away the crazy straw in disgust.

"Yes, Jazz, I'm listening." He slung one shiny silver pants leg over the other.

"Well, then, you're the only one!" Jazz threw her arms in a wide arc, gesturing at the tiny recording studio as if to say, this is all you've got. Nobody fucking cares. It's over.

The little area in the studio behind the glass, they call that the "isolation booth."

So sad, yeah? Plus it was made of white foam panels or something, so it kind of looked like a padded cell.

"You're  _not_ listening." 

Suddenly, Jazz came at Avery in a single leap and yanked his stool out from under him. Luckily, he fell back against the pillows on the crazy-people wall.

"What the hell, Jazz?" he stammered, rubbing his head under his ruby-red mop of hair.

He felt a tear worming its way to visibility. _Ok, no, no, no...boys don't cry...you'll make things a_ million  _times worse, stop stop stop..._

Instead, Jazz's face immediately brightened; half in a "sadist enjoying your pain" sort of way, half in a "Eureka!" sort of way.

"Good, good!" She clapped him on the back and he winced reflexively. 

"Now use that emotion, and make sweet love to us with that dulcet, honeyed, Ian-Curtis-like-baritone-you'd-never-expect-from-a-gay-little-choirboy voice of yours!"

Just as the sound producer signaled to go again, and Avery drew in a breath, and the keyboardist (who wasn't worth mentioning until now and who was awkwardly shoved into the back corner of the isolation booth) placed his hands back on the board to pluck out some gnarly wave-synth sounds — there was a polite knock at the door.

Promptly followed by the door simply being kicked in.

Jazz, practically tearing out a lock of her golden hair with a spasmodic twitch: "We're not paying for that."

In strolled a fetching, well-built man in a salmon-pink blazer with matching slacks, accompanied by an exhausted-looking girl who stayed near the door (or what remained of it).

"Moonbeam City Police, ma'am." The man extended his hand to Jazz, but before she had a chance to take it, he whipped out a pair of sunglasses from an inside pocket, and began cleaning them unceremoniously using the bottom of his blazer.

"Don't worry about the door, ma'am..." the man said, slowly raising his head. "That price will be paid in full by"—he put on his sunglasses dramatically before continuing—"Lady Justice."

The man looked straight at Avery.

He tapped on the glass. "Ex-pop-sensation Sparkles Avery, you are under arrest for the murder of fellow, better pop star Appliqué Johnson. Come out from behind that glass, so you can go behind bars."

Avery jumped to his feet. "It's _Sparks_ Avery! Actually, it's just Ave–wait a second, what? Appliqué Johnson? Murder...?" He felt his bowels curdle.

"I–I didn't...I don't know what...But, I–I–I never...!" He continued to utter variations on that theme until the cop came around and cuffed him.

Avery kept involuntarily making mewling cat noises, or something — what _was_ that? — as he was led away.

Then, Jazz jumped to her feet in her flashy pink jumpsuit.

"Officer, please, wait a second!" She put her hand on his shoulder. "Please, Officer–"

"Dazzle. Dazzle Novak."

"Please, Officer Novak, sir..." She batted her eyelashes, and the man basked in the attention, tossing his long-ish dark hair with a flick of his chin.

Wow, Avery thought in the midst of his cat noises. So when it really came down to it, at the end of it all, Jazz really did, actually, truly, for-reals,  _care_ about him as a person?

"...we just need five more minutes here, ten tops. Then you can take him away. My star here, he only sings well when he's in emotional turmoil. That's how we get the chart-topping hits!

"Usually I just forcibly inject him with drugs until he becomes dependent, and then let him suffer a horrible withdrawal–"

The young woman by the door spoke up: "That's...that's pharmacological torture!"

Dazzle shook his head without looking at her, and simply said, "Bigger fish to fry, Chrysalis. Bigger fish to fry." 

He turned back to the young woman who was now running her hands along his back and biceps. "Alright, ten minutes for this bad news budgie to sing his last swan song. Then, he's going to be caged for good."

Jazz squealed. "Oh, you won't regret it! There's history being made here — he's never been more upset in his _life_! I can see the headline now: ' **Avery's Final Hit Before Jail is Topping the Charts, Thanks to Hot Cop Dazzle Novak!** '"

She "booped" him playfully on the nose.

"That's an awfully long article title," Dazzle smirked charmingly, raising his perfectly coiffed-yet-full brows (can brows be coiffed?).

"I like them long–" Jazz began gaspingly.

Chrysalis heaved out a frustrated sigh loud enough to shut her up.

Avery's brain had already shut down. When the sound producer motioned to start (as if he were just an unimportant side character in all of this, and could care less what was even going on), Avery managed to heave out what sounded to him like shaking a gigantic bag full of whales. Also sounded a little bit like Spandau Ballet, somewhere in there. He did try to reach out and touch the microphone when, for half a second, he was kinda feeling it, but then he remembered that he was in handcuffs, duh, at which point, his singing devolved into a series of loud, broken sobs.

Jazz jumped out of her seat and ran around to the isolation booth.

"Wow"—she made a motion to hug him, then stopped—"well, on second thought, I don't want to hug you since you're a murderer and all, ew. Although, taking out the competition, brilliant idea! Well, not so much because you got caught, but you'll be making me  _so much money_ –"

"I didn't...I didn't..." Avery choked out, before slumping his chin onto his knees in utter dejection.

"Really, that was amazing!" Jazz continued. "Like, back to the golden age of your  _Dead Mom_  album. Wow. I think this is it! Welp, see you later!" She reconsidered. "Or not, I guess."

Jazz made a kind of "toodle-loo!" motion, waggling her fingers, as Avery was dragged away in a continued chorus of, "I didn't do it! I swear, I didn't do it!" She winked at Dazzle, who looked impressed. Chrysalis, on the other hand, unsubtly removed a pair of earplugs.

"For the record, this is the worst kind of exploitation, and I don't approve...and neither will anyone with a working pair of eardrums."

As they exited the building and made their way to the squad car, it occurred to Avery that he should probably be hungrily taking in every remaining bit of the cityscape before it was too late, but his vision was blurry with devastated tears. He still kept shouting, "I didn't do it!" as if that was all of a sudden going to be a magical game-changer.

"It wasn't me! It wasn't–"

"You have the right to remain silent," Dazzle said. "And if you don't exercise it, I'll have to exercise my fist. On your face."


	2. The Apple Killer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rad "interrogates" Avery. Wink wink.

"Welcome to the station,  _Applikiller_ ," Chrysalis said as she led her hysterical young charge through the precinct. 

There were large bay windows everywhere. Windows, windows, so much warmth and light, a gorgeous passionfruit pink lemonade sunset! — Avery was feeling like he'd never see the sun again, or something. It wasn't that he was thinking of 24/7 solitary confinement, but he just felt so...sun-starved, already. Window, last window...and, dark, dank interrogation room.

 

Being plunked down in his chair returned him to his senses enough to catch what Chrysalis said. "Applikiller...?"

"Appliqué Killer, Applikiller? Get it?" She looked rather pleased with herself, removing her ponytail, shaking her hair out, and sweeping it back up again into its prim red form, a less intense shade than Avery's.

Chrysalis sat down across from him while Dazzle hung back in the shadows — which, oddly, casted shadows in the shape of window blinds, even though there were no windows inside...No windows...

Avery gasped for breath. Okay, now he was just getting pathetic.

"I think...I'm having a panic appliqué...I mean attaché...I mean...attack!" Avery said between forced breaths-through-nose. "I need...some air...Can we go outside again for a second?"

Dazzle jumped to Chrysalis' side. "Don't give into his demands!" he yelled.

He banged his hands down on the table, paused a too-long moment for dramatic effect (during which a wheezy old cough from somewhere in the precinct could be heard). He whipped off his sunglasses, staring icy daggers into Avery's mouse-like soul.

"You just couldn't take it, could you, Avery? Everything that was once yours...your face on the billboards, your spotlight, adored and cooed over by millions...or thousands, maybe, I honestly hadn't heard of you before this whole thing, so you couldn't have been that popular–"

"Dazzle," Chrysalis said in a voice that was somewhere between "admonishing mother" and "I'm going to strangle you."

"I thought we agreed that I was leading this interrogation, to get more beat experience?"

Dazzle chuckled. " _I_  know how you can get more 'beat experience,' Chrys–"

"Dazzle Novak, I will bash your brains into a bloody pulp, with this rusty folding chair, in front of our suspect."

"Okay — suspect!" Avery interjected himself, a bit calmer, leaning forward imploringly as much as the handcuffs would allow, "So I'm just a suspect? But, what even makes me a suspect?"

Chrysalis turned her attentions to him, smilingly.

"Yes, we're going to get to that shortly, because the first stage of an interrogation is 'disclosure,' in which your rights are–"

"Oh!" Dazzle glanced at where a watch would be if he were actually wearing one, "I would love to stay and watch this interrogation...More like, in-terrible-ogation...wait, no, interr-BORE-gation. That's better." 

He yawned extravagantly, then winked with a killer smirk. "I just remembered I have to go investigate the Food Truck Friday...case...right this second."

Chrysalis had given up. "Whatever. But a senior officer has to supervise my interrogation."

"Okay, make Rad do it with you."

Chrysalis made a "yuck" face.

"...On second thought, can I go with you to get taquerias–uh, I mean, _tackle_ this very important Food Truck Friday case? Rad can handle this himself."

"Let's do it! Hopefully Rad doesn't fuck everything up too badly." Dazzle said, beaming. "Oh, well." He was sliding on his sunglasses again when one of the arms broke off. "Damnit! Another pair busted from overuse!"

The two officers were almost out the door before Dazzle turned back to Avery and said, "Wait here. The Officer of Awful-Offal will be with you shortly. Ha-ha. Ha."

"Dazzle, I told you, that pun doesn't translate to being said out loud."

"Oh, yeah."

_Awful-awful? What?_

So, Avery waited. He could hear some kind of annoying dripping noise, and that same officer from before still coughing dryly. He was trying to get a feel for his surroundings, to notice everything he possibly could — that was what criminal types were supposed to do, right? Like, he could scoot over to the wall, and kick a hole in the part where the dripping noise was coming from, and bust open the vulnerable pipe, and then pick his handcuffs with a jagged pipe piece that happened to fly perfectly into his hand...And was he even supposed to be wearing handcuffs? He could have sworn somewhere that handcuffs in the interrogation room were an illegal form of coercion and thus reserved for bad crime dramas. And pornos.

_Okay, calm down. You didn't do this! You're a terrible liar, but you don't have to lie, you'll be telling the truth! So it's all good, right? Point for me. Yay! I'll be in and out–_

The door slowly squeaked open.

"Hello, Apple-Killer."

At first, Avery couldn't get a good look at the cop, since he too was inexplicably being obscured by shadows from non-existent window blinds.

"Officer Rad Cunningham," said the man, and stepped forward into the light (or, more so, stepped forward, and the shadows just as inexplicably disappeared).

The first thing Avery noticed was this guy's large-collared, flamboyant purple two-piece suit (were the seams stitched with actual neon?). It was emblazoned with his (Rad's) own name all over the place, most remarkably on a gigantic belt buckle. With his ridiculous bouffant and getup, he looked like the love child of a 50s greaser and Grace Jones.

But the second thing Avery noticed...there was something wickedly charming in the man's manner, in the simpering smile on his chiseled features...Something that was confusingly, but positively,  _bewitching_. He swallowed, tasting the remnants of his fizzy drink (the one with the crazy straw) from earlier.

"...Do they have Fruit-ose in prison?"

_Shit. Shit shit shit._  Of all the stupid fucking things he could have said.

Rad perked up immediately, looking at Avery like a fresh piece of promotion pie.

_No._  Avery was not going to go to jail because he was a dum-dum who acted more guilty when he wasn't than if he actually  _was_ , just so New Wave Elvis here could get promoted.

Rad laughed openly at him.

"Yes, of course they have Fruit-ose in prison! Served in a margarita glass, with a slice of pineapple and a  _tiny_ umbrella"—he paused to mime the tiny umbrella being placed just so—"You should do just fine, superstar!"

An awkward pause followed as Avery felt himself flush the color of his hair. He was beginning to believe maybe he did kill Appliqué Johnson...and just didn't remember? Maybe he blacked out sometimes, and had an alter ego that did stuff without him knowing? Obviously, he needed to know, like, when Appliqué was killed, and was annoyed nobody had told him anything yet.

After a requisite amount of time had passed for Avery to stop worrying and for Rad to come up with a joke, Rad said, "I thought you'd be more of an apple juice fan...Because...Apple-Killer...Apple juice. Get it? Anyway, if we're done talking about what fluids you'll be swallowing in prison," Rad clicked his pen once, slowly, in a way that somehow seemed lewd, "...You know, I bought your new album, Apple-Killer."

"You did?"

"Yeah, and I loved it!" Rad said, and put his feet up on the desk, smirking.

"You... _did_?"

"In fact, I loved it so much, I dropped it in the toilet and took a shit on it!" Rad laughed maniacally.

Avery narrowed his eyes. He waited for the cop to stop laughing. And waited.

Rad wiped away a tear. "Phew! Hah...H-ah..."

Avery's eyes were still narrowed. Yes, his most recent album had sucked a fat one because he wasn't allowed to be involved in any of the production. But, still.

"Well, I hope it clogged your toilet," he retaliated, settling down into his cold metal chair. He crossed his legs archly.

Rad looked confused, as if he had expected a meaner comeback. There was an awkward silence for a moment.

"Uh, just so you know, I wasn't, like, serious." Rad was tapping his pen at nervous hyper-speed against the table. "What, did you think I actually pooped on it, that I'm  _actually_ into pooping on stuff and weird poop things?"—he cough-laughed—"Ha...ha-hem. Yeah, right."

Avery let him sit on it for a moment before finally asking, "So what's the evidence against me?"

"Oh." Rad pulled out a single crumpled half-sheet of paper from a grease-stained case folder. "So, Apple-Killer..." He stood up and leaned forward over the table in an attempt to be menacing. Avery was immediately hit with some heavy, musky smell that made him shiver with arousal. It was hard to describe the smell — kind of sweaty, but a sweet, masculine, brisk updraft, where it was like, the smell had to have an even more delectating  _center,_ and he wanted to find that goddamn center...Rad didn't seem to notice anything was up. He twirled the interrogation lamp in Avery's face.

"Ow ow!" Avery recoiled like a vampire from the brightness.

The ol' "perp-sweating" technique. Classic. The perp was sweating, all right. 

"As you already know..." Rad paused for a moment, making eye contact coldly. 

Avery sat stock-still, frozen in place. After his eyes adjusted, it was hard to stop them from wandering down Rad's body.

"Appliqué Johnson was murdered the night before last, at the Grande Hotel in Sunhaupt City. Strangled to death." Rad sat back down and whipped the lamp back to its normal position. Avery found himself a little disappointed.

He'd never really cared too much about Appliqué and the fascination surrounding his "neon veins." Those were a series of tube implants running alongside every vein in his body, making the guy light up like a Christmas tree. That was what'd made Appliqué famous, a folk legend of sorts, as the embodiment of the country's booming prosperity via neon mining — he was a prodigal shining beacon of hope for the poor, weary masses. Plus, it was hella legit.

So, in the fans' eyes (literally), Avery dulled in comparison. Who could compete with the guy who, it was rumored, had a dick that lit up so bright during sex a girl could see it inside her? Appliqué probably could've fucked a dog and people would've just been all, "Woah, that's so cool!"

Rad cleared his throat, calling Avery back to attention. He realized his time spent staring off into space could be mistaken as a murderer's fond reverie.

...Plus, Appliqué could even change the neon's color with a remote control, and he changed it about once a month according to fan polls!...Anyway...

"We found no prints, no other... _DNA evidence_...But we did find a letter next to the body, on your official stationery, and based on various sources, in your handwriting, too," Rad said, lifting up the piece of paper.

"...Wait, why did you say 'DNA evidence' like that?"

"Well, you know. DNA evidence, other than prints. Hair. Skin cells. Um.  _Other stuff_."

Avery wrinkled his nose. "What are you implying?" He wrinkled it further. "That's disgusting!"

A ghost of a smirk crossed Rad's face. 

His hair, covered in a layer of Dippity-do gel, shined like onyx in the lamplight. His stare was piercing, sinister. 

"I dunno, you guys are the freaks, not me," he said, voice lilting smoothly in what seemed to be a characteristic way of his, his neck grooving from side to side a couple times as if for emphasis. He clicked his pen again. "Fact, bet you enjoyed watching the light leave Appliqué's eyes. Seeing his face turn blue.

"Or...well...seeing the light go from his whole body, and maybe he was already blue"—Rad continued to explain, and Avery looked confused, which annoyed Rad—"You know what I mean! Anyway, when we found him, he was black as a used candle wick. Not in a racist way!" Rad paused. "Like he'd been  _burnt_  to death, I mean. Like he...short-circuited. Black fingers, black toes." Rad sniffed, as if he could still smell the burning corpse.

Avery was super grossed out by gore, so the idea of the neon implants under Appliqué's skin darkening, cooling, and bursting open into one big bruise, like he was a Black Plague victim, was a little much. Before he could help it, a dry gag rolled out of his mouth.

"Yeah, I'm sure you're so disgusted," Rad said sarcastically, drawing out the "so" for a few cheeky seconds.

_OhmyGod, duh — alibi!_

Avery leaned forward again, a pleading look in his silver eyes. "Two nights ago, I was in the studio practicing all night. You said two nights ago, right? Because I was in the studio three days ago too. And the day before that. And also yesterday." He frowned and leaned back in the uncomfortable chair. "My agent has my bodyguard hold me down and pour glitz in my ears. It's a whole thing," he waved his hand as if to brush it off, "I used to fight back, but now I don't anymore since it's the only chance I have to lay down during 36 hour shifts."

Rad snorted. He looked around as if there were an audience hearing this, with a, like, "Can you  _believe_ this guy?" expression on his face. "Hah! That's nothing. Guess who got trapped in virtual reality for two months and finally experienced true love and happiness for the first time, only to have it all cruelly ripped," he splayed his arms out wide to demonstrate, "out from underneath, and thrust right back into a life of nothing but mockery and scorn?"

"...Uh...you?"

"Duh, yes, me!" Rad turned the lamp on Avery's face again. "Idiot."

In a burst of red-hot anger, Avery swung his leg around the table and kicked the lamp as hard as he could off the table. It shattered and left the room in a thick blanket of darkness. He felt a weird rush, suddenly sitting in quiet static and sensory deprivation. A kind of nervous anticipation climbed down the ladder of his spine.

"Did he...escape...?" Avery heard Rad mutter to himself.

"No."

A little tinkle of moving glass and a squeak from Rad.

"Ow, ow, that went through – agh! – my shoe!" Rad slammed into the desk with a hollow tinny clang. "Okay, now you're  _really_ going to get it."

Rad rounded the desk and launched himself at Avery, gripping the arms of the chair. Avery's lids fluttered madly on reflex. He still couldn't see. He jumped in stupid surprise when Rad began to speak and revealed how close their faces were.

"This is  _my_ case, this is going to be  _my_ case!" 

Avery could feel the heat, and Cheeto breath, from the cop's mouth.

"You are not going to screw this up for me..." Rad whispered, each fricative consonant leaving a little puff of air on Avery's chin. Avery's dick twinged, which in the total darkness felt like a radar ping of isolated sensation.

"I'm sorry," was all he could say, his tongue dry and frayed like the pages of an old book.

"You will be."

He could feel the exhale of Rad silently sneering at him, and again the small release of body heat felt drew their heads even closer together, like magnets. Silence. Avery could practically feel the curve of Rad's jaw and neck, his stubble. He could have leaned forward at any second, so easily. Tightening every muscle (he could control) into a locked vise, focusing on his pelvic floor staying in that exact position in the cold metal chair, _focus, focus_ , was the only way to stop himself.

Suddenly, Rad pulled his chair out from under him. Not again!

" _Ow_! Jesus!"

"You just can't stand shiny bright light in your face, can you, Apple-Killer? It's stealing your spotlight"—he could hear Rad's shoes clacking at an even, measured pace, circling his prey—"and you won't stop until you extinguish that light for  _good_." That last word, said in a smarmy, self-satisfied way, squishy excess like molasses on the "o" sound.

Avery picked up the side of his face from the metal floor and felt a stab of pain. "That doesn't make sense...Light in your face is a spotlight. So it wouldn't steal your spotlight."

Rad growled. He fell on all fours. Finally he found Avery's shoulder pads, then his collar. Rad lifted him up halfway before realizing he was too out of shape to lift even Avery's thin, boyish form. The handcuffs cut into Avery's wrists as he was dropped to the ground again.

"Just admit it! Admit you killed Apple–Applik–Appell...just say you killed him already!" Rad replaced Avery's chair and plopped down helplessly in it.

"I didn't kill him!" Avery said, rolling onto his back, like he was stargazing or something. He arched it to lessen the pain of the handcuffs still digging into his wrists.

"Shut up! Just  _shut up_!" Rad kicked the chair leg, sulking. He seemed two seconds away from a full-on temper tantrum, though Avery couldn't see him.

He was pretty fucking grouchy himself. He hadn't slept in 28 hours, he had been accused of arson, murder, and bad singing, and had actually done that last one, and he'd been shoved and prodded around just a little bit too much.

"No! I'm  _not_ going to shut up!" He seized around madly, trying to get out of the cuffs. "You horrible, evil...incompetent...self-obsessed cops"—he snaked his way over to the chair, as if touching Rad's leg with his torso in the dark, like a dying dog alerting its owner, would somehow strengthen his argument—"are going to listen to me! Two days ago, at six A.M., I went to the studio, and I was there until noon the next day, at which point I went to my apartment, crawled into bed, and shook like an epileptic until I finally fell into a restless sleep for about two hours, when I saw my bodyguard standing over me with a cattle prod. Then I was back to the studio." He tried to sit up with the help of the chair and Rad's stationary form. "Will either of them admit to that? Probably not. But they're witnesses that I was in the studio! And so are Benny, and Jet, and other Jet! Isn't there security footage or something?"

Rad didn't seem to be paying attention. He withdrew his leg, causing Avery to collapse back onto the ground.

"Stupid Dazzle. He told me I wasn't smart enough to handle this case on my own. But I'll show him! I'll handle it so good...!"

Avery waited until Rad had trailed off from his (rather convenient from an expository standpoint) conversation with himself.

"Dazzle Novak? That other cop that was just in here?"

"Yeah. And I'll bet you just love him too"—and Rad kept continuing before Avery could object—"I bet you're, like, worshiping the ground he walks on–"

"Um–"

"You and everybody else at this station. Who's been responsible for hundreds of deaths all over the world? Dazzle. Who's been responsible for, like, only one hundred? Me–"

"And meanwhile, I haven't killed a  _single fucking person_!" Avery exploded, trying to somehow shake the handcuffs off again.

He exasperatedly worked his way to a standing position, about to...well, he didn't know what he was about to do...if these handcuffs did not come off right. This. Second.

"Mmhmm, and yet everybody treats Dazzle like a goddamn  _hero_." Rad's emphasis on that last word was dripping with utter contempt. "And nobody even cares who I am, unless I'm the butt of some stupid joke that's not even funny, and then after that they...throw me away again like a...a..." he snapped his fingers a couple times, searching for the right phrase, "...an unwanted third testicle on the dick of life."

Stumbling over a piece of glass, Avery was not in the mood for someone else's sob story.

"Wow, that's deep," he said dryly, sitting down on the edge of the table, handcuffs scraping on the metal. "Anyway, no, I was going to say that Dazzle Novak is a jerk and an idiot and needs to be fired. So you two are on the same level." His upper lip curled under into a little smirk, that was still a bit sheepish (though Rad couldn't see), because he was still nervous back-talking a cop like that, even if the cop did suck.

Rad gasped. "So, you think I'm just as good a cop as Dazzle?"

Pause.

"...In the most literal sense–"

"Except, Dazzle  _is_ a jerk!  _And_ an idiot." 

Avery gave him a clipped nod before realizing Rad wouldn't be able to see it. He felt a faint twinge of happiness, himself. It was all so stupid, but whatever. He actually rolled his eyes, which, for the fiftieth time, it was too dark to see anyway, so...

"Look, I know what it's like to have a shitty life. It's...shitty. And in both our cases, caused by extremely illegal and flagrant workplace violence. But you have to think, I'm still  _me_. I'm special, and all that. I dunno. And even in the darkest times..." he couldn't resist, "when all the lamps have been knocked off all the tables..."

He giggled. The point was made, one assumed. He stood up from the table and took a step towards Rad, just because he felt like it, but accidentally stepped too far and tripped on top of him, toppling the chair over. Avery was in hysterics at this point (but good ones), while Rad was silent, just awkwardly trying to untangle himself from Avery's handcuff-pretzeled limbs, as the crazy man laughed helplessly on top of him...

The door opened. Without any kicking, this time. Light flooded the room.

"Rad, not  _again_!" Chrysalis walked in, turned the overhead light on which had apparently existed all this time, and sat in the other chair, rubbing her temples grievously.

"It's not what it looks like!" Rad yelped, scrambling to undo this mess. "It's not what it looks like! Get...off..." Rad tried to body-roll away, but Avery's handcuffs had somehow become stuck incriminatingly to his bedazzled belt, which Rad simply ripped off as fast as possible. For his part, Avery was still laughing like a wild hyena. Maybe it was work stress...or the stress of being arrested (a-stress-ted?)...but he did feel better than he had in...the last 28 hours of no sleep, anyway.

Chrysalis, as usual, was rather unperturbed by being the only sane one. She blinked once, slowly, before asking:

"Did you find out anything?"

"Uhh...yes? I found out that Apple-Killer here definitely likes killing lights. Evidence!" He pointed an accusatory finger at the broken lamp.

"That...is not evidence, Rad. Also, we don't have the budget to replace it, so I'll have to bring my Little Gumshoe's lamp from home."

"Ha-ha...'Little Gumshoe'...Mmph..."

"Shut it, Applikiller."

"You're saying it wrong. It's _Apple Killer_."

"Rad..."


	3. MJ in Court

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avery attends what could be very loosely defined as a "court hearing," with a special guest as the judge.

Avery's holding cell looked the same as the isolation booth at the studio. White, foam-padded walls.

He supposed that was profound in a "life is a prison," "man is born free but everywhere he goes he is in chains," type of way, but for now he was just going the fuck to sleep in his ugly orange jumpsuit. No screaming Jazz, no bodyguard to pin him down in a non-sexy way. The way his inner ear muscles tensed up involuntarily as his bodyguard poured the coarse grains of glitz; tympanic reflex squeezing in resistance, a dull roaring noise shaking his skull...He could still feel it now. And then, his body giving up, giving way to glitz and to the fleeting beauty of its intense, Technicolor world.

But nobody liked his happy music, no. Jazz we always repeating the guideline she'd made up: "Always Sad Songs" (ASS).

"Follow that ASS, Avery. That's what the fans want. ASS."

 

-

 

He had no idea how much time had gone by when he was startled awake by the heavy barred door grating open. Officer Novak had an unreadable look on that delicately handsome face of his.

"It's time for your hearing."

"What time is it?"

"'Time for your hearing.'"

"No–"

"More like, 'time for your hearing to be checked,' am I right? Ha."

"..."

"It's 8 A.M." Dazzle finished wrenching the heavy, rusted bars to the side. "What, did you expect to sleep all day?"

He followed the cop without further argument, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was relieved to hear it was the next morning, though, and that he'd finally gotten a full night's sleep for once. It was a very foreign feeling, being this refreshed, and he almost could've enjoyed it if not for the glitz withdrawals kicking in. At any rate, he figured he'd need the extra strength for whatever was coming next. 

They walked down the thin, bright hallway, passing by each cell in a staccato rhythm. Most of them were unoccupied, which, Avery guessed, meant the criminals were still out on the streets.

"But you're still wearing the same thing from yesterday."

Dazzle turned on his heels. Avery almost bumped into him.

"No. Yesterday, I was wearing a  _salmon_ pink blazer. Today, I'm wearing a  _Baker-Miller_  pink blazer. Studies show that that color makes criminals calmer. It's like the sedative of colors. So I can sneak up behind you perps and–" He made a very ambiguous hand gesture. Avery decided not to question it.

"...Hey, aren't I supposed to have a lawyer or something?" he asked instead.

Dazzle scoffed. He leaned with an air of detachment against the nearest wall, and reached in his coat pocket—

"Damn. They're broken. Forgot." Face lacking in reflective polarized lenses, Dazzle continued, "We don't really...do things the traditional way around here. Especially not for lowlifes like you–"

"How do you  _know_ –"

"Some cops say they 'play by their own rules.' Usually that's just an expression"—however, he had invoked the expression very seriously, sacredly—"but in my case, I devised an entire  _code_ of my own rules.' He slumped further down against the wall, hands in his pockets:

"Let me refer you to Title 1, Article 1, Chapter 1, Section 1, Subsection (a) of the Dazzle Code:  _The Daz-Man is always right_."

"...That's the whole code, isn't it?"

"That's all the code  _needs_ , smart-ass. It's kind of like, 'The customer is always right.' Except the opposite."

Avery grew pale. "I have the right to an attorney!" Familiar anxiety, one of the most glaring effects of glitz withdrawal, was creeping up on him. "I'm pretty sure that's in the Bill of Rights somewhere! I don't know, I never paid much attention in Social Studies," he slightly relented.

"Well, let that be a lesson to all you kiddos, stay in school." Dazzle shoved off the wall and continued walking.

"Uh, what? There are no kiddos."

"Good thing, isn't it? Wouldn't want them to be around a murderous pedophile rapist."

"I'm not a–"

"Also, it doesn't matter what the Bill of Rights says, because you've canceled it out by writing a Bill of Wrongs. And it's my job...to right and unwrite the wrongs you write."

"...What?"

"We're here!" Dazzle grandly demonstrated a pair of huge old double doors, twice his height, with high lancet arches that appeared to be inlaid with gold.

"What? The hearing is being held right here?"

"Yup. That's why they call it a 'here-ing.' 'Cause it's right here. Duh. Anyway, ladies first," he said, opening the large door, which creaked ominously.

But then, instead of coming in after Avery, he let the door swing shut with a thunderous slam that shook the room. It was completely empty except for one elderly lady as the stereotypical court stenographer, and the man behind the bench: none other than Mayor Eo Jaxxon, flanked as always by his white snow leopards, like sentinel statues.

"...Mayor Jaxxon?"

The leopards growled, kneading their paws. One of them crouched back tensely, about to pounce. Avery yelped and dashed halfway across the courtroom.

"That's Judge Jaxxon to you...citizen."

"..."

"I'm sorry, I just can't seem to  _remember your name_ , citizen," he continued, flashing sharp white teeth in an extravagantly wide smile.

Avery tried and failed to stop his knees from shaking.

"Yes, sir. I like the, um, alliteration."

"You can stop kissing my ass!" Jaxxon yelled. The leopards growled lowly in the background.

Avery coughed and changed the subject: "But, aren't there supposed to be, like, clerks and attorneys and"—Avery eyed the leopards ruefully, approaching the bench with caution—" _guards_?"

Jaxxon laughed his gruff, throaty, rather fetching laugh, his white mustache gleaming like a symbol of old Southern Gothic wealth.

"We've waived those things according to subsection 1-1-1-1(a) of...I believe it's the...Dazzle Code. You're in my house now — the big house."

"I don't think–"

Avery was interrupted as the stenographer, eyeglass chains swinging in time with her neck folds, handed him a piece of paper. It said:  _You'd better be quiet, or he'll [sic] his leopards on you._

He glanced over at her. She winked.

"So, Spark Plug, we've decided to make you an offer."

_Another nickname?_ Although one that proved that the mayor  _did_ in fact know his name, so, ha. Also, he'd been called "Sparky" a lot, but, "Spark Plug" — was that a gay joke? Avery was  _so so so_  far back in the closet (public image and what not), not only was he in Narnia, he was getting bummed against the lamppost by Mr. Tumnus. And obviously, coming out of the closet was not the best decision to make right before going to prison.

Jaxxon stood up. His white suit with striped trousers somehow didn't look ridiculous on him, but simply served to make him look even more monied and powerful. He started twirling a walking stick with a carved lion on the handle. Avery had to step back to avoid being smacked in the face with it.

"So...We know you did it, basically. The anthropometrics match up."

"What...what does that mean?"

"I don't know what it means. I'm just the mayor!"

Just when Avery thought he might grow a pair and  _actually_ strangle Jaxxon, the stenographer handed another typed page to him: _Anthropometrics means the size of the suspect's body parts. Er, hands, in this case. And whether those sizes match wounds inflicted on the body. The shape of the bruises on the victim match your hands exactly._

"But, a lot of people have hands my size!"

"Sure, but not a lot of them have...your  _rings_!" Jaxxon said, hitting a button on a remote.

A projector suddenly lowered down out of nowhere. It stopped inside a frame of flashing marquee bulbs, like at a carnival.

Without warning, a picture of Appliqué's bloated corpse was on the screen. Enlarged 10x by the projector and burnt to a crisp, as opposed to the sexy star he once was. The bloating must have been from the neon tubes in his veins exploding open, gas spreading under his skin — there were black bubbles everywhere where his skin had stretched or burst.

Avery screamed so loud the leopards ran behind the bench and cowered.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!"

Jaxxon spoke over the squeals: "See the little indents around the neck?"

Avery forced himself to look at the burbling black mass again. He did see three tiny rectangular imprints on Appliqué's neck.

"So, ordinarily we might be able to recover some latent fingerprints on a strangled victim. However, he was too...oozy for that."

Avery held back a barf.

"But you see those three spots on his neck? Exact match with the rings you're wearing right now, same places, same thickness. And we have that letter written by you, too."

Feeling faint, Avery collapsed into the front row of (empty) public seats. "What does it say?"

"Well, it just says,  _Grrrrrr_. But that's your G, and those are your Rs, aren't they, Sparks?"

Thankfully, he hit the button on the remote again, so that the picture on the projector switched to various written documents of Avery's. Exact handwriting match. Mayor Jaxxon was still twirling his unnecessary cane in circles.

Avery stumbled toward the stenographer, who was holding the offending letter, on his personalized stationery (Stationavery™), which had felled quite a few forests back when he was popular.

_Grrrrrr,_ in his handwriting. His pretty calligraphy. It was maddening. 

The letters sat there, looking as monstrous and disfigured as pretty letters can, completely defying all explanation. He felt dizzy. The  _Grrrrrr_ became a blur.

_Grrrrrr._ _Grrrrrr._

"Grrrrrr." Oh. That was a leopard.

"This is insane! I-I never did this! I don't remember any of it!" Avery threw himself into the front row again, lying face-up like he was at the therapist's. "Ok, so...like I told the cops, I was forced to do glitz a bunch of times. I don't think I ever blacked out while on it — especially not two nights ago. I  _remember_ being in the studio."

Jaxxon had a catlike gleam in his eye. "You were  _forced_ to do glitz?"

"Yes. My agent and my bodyguard forced me to do it, then made me go cold turkey, back and forth. To make me feel like I was dying so my music would be more emotional. And...I'm not sure why they  _cared_  so much about that. Sure, music is powerful. I'm all for that. At least I..." he sighed involuntarily, so hard he coughed, "...used to be. But can you even hear the difference between method acting and real emotion? What's the point of torturing someone just to make the music sound, like, one percent better, tops–"

"You were  _forced_?"

Avery wrinkled his nose confusedly.

"Sparks, you are the biggest pussy in this room."

"You don't–"

"You weren't _forced_. You let them do that shit to you. Hoping the crazy freaks were right, that it might turn your career around, but mostly because you were too much of a sissy to stop it from happening."

Avery approached the bench, slowly, shaking with fury, like a palsied old war vet telling off a draft dodger.

"Have you ever had your will broken? Totally and completely broken? Until you were a shell of–"

Jaxxon laughed, loud and guttural, emerald eyes still gleaming sharp as knives. He strode quickly around the side of the bench, one of the leopards slinking alongside him, brushing against him. He stood on the bench step, towering above Avery. A row of shadows from window blinds appeared on his face... _Come on, there are no windows in here_ _, seriously?_ Then, Avery noticed it was just the light of the projector on his face. Jaxxon narrowed his eyes, sneering imperiously and all that good stuff.

"October 1950. I was stationed in Pyongtaek, North Korea, and half our men had already gotten the order to retreat."

Oh. So Jaxxon was an actual war veteran. Oops.

I was crouched out in the boondocks with the rest of my company, lying in wait for those motherfuckin' goo–"

The stenographer coughed loudly.

"–good...soldiers." It visibly pained him to make the revision. "Their tanks started shootin' off in the distance, and I saw the guy next to me go down...I remember thinkin' in a hot, smoky haze, 'Did he trip and fall?'" Jaxxon poked Avery in the chest with his walking stick for emphasis. "He  _didn't_ trip and fall."

"I was paralyzed with fear — well, either it was fear or the canister round shrapnel that had just about torn open my stomach. I was on the ground for hours while everything blew to hell around me, screams up close, screams far away...I could barely hear with my ears ringing, coughing up smoke and blood. Just then, I saw two of our guys getting strafed with machine gun fire. I took out all three of the enemy shooters before the fade-to-black."

Avery felt the blood drain from his face.

Jaxxon lifted him up easily by the collar of his jumpsuit. "Did I get a Medal of Honor for that, did I get a goddamn thing?"

He held Avery aloft for a few more seconds. Awkward pause that became even more awkward as Jaxxon searched for the remote control for the projector.

"Where did you put it, Marlene?"

"..."

"I don't see it–Ah! Here."

He stepped terrifyingly close to Avery again. His expression shifted to an even darker, colder one. He seemed to retreat into himself.

" _Did I get a goddamn thing_?"

Pause. Avery could feel the weird tension getting even weirder. He panicked.

"N-no?"

" _No_."

Dramatically, Jaxxon pointed the remote at the projector and the window-blind shadows faded off his face. The room was pitch-black for a second before the projector lit up again, playing a  _Macintosh Presenter 1986_ slideshow in 8-bit pixel art.

MIDI music played cheerfully in the background as Jaxxon pointed his walking stick at Avery's pixelated face on the screen. It looked like a character from an NES game. In fact...

"Oh, hey! My video game! I look so cute in that game!"

"Shut up, Sparks."

"Yessir."

"This is you. Perky little nancy boy with a head of fire-engine red hair like the kind of clown they hire for  _other_ kinds of parties. Voice of an angel, I'll admit, or used to be before this fucking 'experimental phase' — thought you were supposed to get that out of your system in college, Spark Plug — and  _five_ platinum albums. Fifteen Grammys. Awards out the damn wazoo."

He strode over to the stenographer as if to get her involved in whatever he was conspiring. 

"Twenty awards. What do you think of that, Marlene?"

Silence. "...Marlene?"

Jaxxon stepped behind her and the typewriter and laughed. "Oh, I see, you wrote it on the transcript, so he can't see–Ha! That's awfully mean, Marl. Ah, ha. That's a little mean, even for me."

He swiveled on his walking stick, returning his attention to Avery: "How about you? What do  _you_ think of that?" His eyes sparkled with a strange mix of mirth and anger. He was egging Avery on, but he was also sure going to crack him over the head for giving the wrong answer.

"..."

"What do you think of getting awards and fame for whining  _boo-hoo_ about how  _sad_ poor little Avery's life is, when my captain stepped on a rigged mortar round and  _survived_...only to decay into a mess of gangrene over the next...very, very painful...two weeks?"

Yep, he was sure he whole body was bloodless right now. His heart wasn't even beating.

"W-well, yes, sir, but...my music...it isn't supposed to be about me, or my life. It's supposed to be about war, and pain, and death, and all that stuff. So...uh...in a way, wouldn't you say I'm honoring their memories...uh...like, um, Memorial Day..."

Jaxxon's look was a mix of confusion and pity, which came as a relief.

"You really think so, don't you? You really do  _believe_ that." He shook his head in mad disbelief, like he was looking at a unicorn.

He gave an avuncular, "Haw!" before clapping Avery extra-hard on the back.

"Lyrics like, 'Slamming the door, Mom and Dad/On your rules, and I'm glad/I would jump off a ledge/But I guess the door's wedged.' Now  _that's_ an homage to fallen heroes, if there ever was one."

Silence.

The stenographer started humming the tune absentmindedly. Jaxxon shot her a look. She cleared her throat and smiled. 

After a bit, she tapped a key three times. Pause, then again. 

"Quit typing ellipses, Marlene!" Jaxxon shouted. "And as for you, Spark Plug, you are a complete disgrace and a waste of space. Put  _that_ line in your next album and snort it."

Jaxxon rapped Avery on the side of the head with the walking stick. The younger man's bottom lip trembled fiercely.

" _Korea_ ," Jaxxon said, furrowing his brow. "Try Korea on for size, and see if that still upsets you."

He sauntered back behind the bench, retiring in his victory. The silver fox cracked his knuckles, a warm smile returning to his face.

"Alright, Sparks. Remember when I told you we were going to make you an offer?"

The stenographer, jowls all a-wobble, held up a piece of paper. Jaxxon looked at it.

"Yes, Marlene, I  _know_  that was over a hundred lines of text ago!" he sighed. "We've got an  _audience_ , so we're trying to keep things fast-paced and interesting."

"An audience?" Avery scratched his head, trying to find a hidden camera.

"Yes. You always have to keep your audience in mind. What are they looking for? Adventure? Romance? A former superstar getting eaten by a pair of hungry snow leopards in an epic three-second gladiatorial showdown?"

Avery stood frozen. The leopards stayed where they were, but twitched their giant tails and licked their giant lips. 

A bolt of fear bum-rushed him to the giant courtroom doors. Locked. (And in a weird way, that was a good thing, because even if they hadn't been locked, they were still really heavy, and he might not have been able to open them, and that would have been really embarrassing. But not as embarrassing as getting his ass eaten on live TV.)

(Maybe that could have been phrased less suggestively.)

"Help! Somebody help me!" He pounded on the double doors, and kept trying the knob helplessly.

_I would jump off a ledge/But I guess the door's wedged._

The leopards approached him slowly, batting at each other, as if deciding who would get first dibs. They drew closer and closer, snarling hungrily.

Just then, the door swung open, smacking Avery right in the face. He went down. The cop from the interrogation entered the room, putting his hands up slightly in a deferential, "Sorry I'm late!" gesture.

"Hi, everyone! My name is Rad, and, I  _am_ rad, ha ha, that's what I always tell new people when–"

Avery screamed.

Rad shot him a glare for interrupting.

" _Anyway_ , Pizzaz said I'm supposed to sit in on this because"—Avery began crab-walking towards the corner of the room as the snow leopards kept coming—"I'm complaining around the office too much about the devastating loss of my virtual wife and child. So I gotta listen to you do your Korea thing. Heh." He adjusted the large purple lapel of his suit nervously.

"Ah, yes, Officer Cunningham. The pervert!" Jaxxon laughed a hearty, charming smoker's laugh.

At this point, Avery was running around the courtroom at breakneck speed as the leopards chased him around like giant, angry, furry clouds.

"I am  _not_ a sex offender!" Rad pouted.

Jaxxon reclined back in his chair. "I calls 'em like I sees 'em." He gleefully resumed watching Avery try and outrun the leopards.

"Well, why do you calls me and sees me as a sex offender?!"

No answer. Rad slumped into a chair in the audience gallery, and did not react as a leopard leaped over his shoulder.

Avery rounded the bend of the audience stairs and ran to the door again, banging and yelling. The faster snow leopard caught up to him and bit him on the sleeve. Avery tried to yank the clothing article off, but remembered he was wearing a jumpsuit. He rushed to undo his jumpsuit zipper with the opposite hand, as the leopard, its jaw an iron vise grip, shook him to and fro like a chew toy. He screamed like a wild banshee. He kicked his legs and accidentally kicked the other leopard in the jugular. He had almost worked the jumpsuit off, revealing a lean, lithe, but yoga-toned frame, when Jaxxon yelled:

"At ease."

The leopards responded immediately, their expressions going blank. They slinked back over to Jaxxon's side immediately.

Avery, half-undressed with his sleeves on the ground drenched in leopard spit, gaped at him.

"We can't have you getting naked on TV," Jaxxon said. "The FCC and the network would be all over our asses."

Rad raised his hand.

Jaxxon groaned. "Yes, Cunningham?"

"What does FCC stand for?"

"Federal–"

"And should we be taking notes...? Or will we all get copies of the transcript at the end of the session?"

"Shut up, Cunningham."

Jaxxon turned to Avery, who had not moved from his previous position and thus still looked like a harem concubine posing for a painting. 

"So the deal is this, Sparks. You have 72 hours from this very moment to clear your name. If you're innocent, of course. You have our force on retainer to help you out. And the whole thing"—he motioned to the front door as a couple cameramen came in—"will be recorded on live TV!" He smiled and shook his head, satisfied. 

"If you can't prove you didn't kill Appliqué, then Seona and Sheena here will be glad to give you an eye for an eye...and a  _tooth for a tooth_."

The cameramen scooted as close as they were comfortable with to the snow leopards and filmed their cute, growling faces.

"That's not–but–you can't! How is any of this even  _allowed_?" He looked desperately around the room for someone sane to level with...Surprisingly, he found someone.

"Speaking of sexy kitties!" Jaxxon clucked after Pizzaz Miller, who cringed uncomfortably, avoiding eye contact with him.

She didn't seem herself at all, from what Avery knew of her. He was a bit of an admirer; he had a copy of every magazine cover she'd ever graced:  _'Murican Cops, Five-Oh,_ _Moonbeam City Weekly_ (Article Title: _"_ Pizzaz Miller is MCW's WCW!" _), Heiress, Feministe_...The list went on. But now she stood before Jaxxon, being ogled in her tasteful fuchsia shift dress that seemed too conservative to sexualize. He purred as she turned her back to him.

"Sparks Avery..." she nodded to acknowledge him, "I'm Pizzaz Miller, Moonbeam City Police Chief. I'd like to extend a formal apology for everything you've had to deal with."

He was about to be all,  _Yeah, I was basically mauled to death by leopards just now_ , but shaking her hand unleashed his inner fanboy.

"Yeah, of course I know who you are, Pizzaz! I, um, I just love your work. I mean, your print work, your catalogues — 'How to Wear More Neon Than a Liquor Store Display Window?' That was  _everything_. And, of course, catching criminals and killers, and all that. 

"'Wake the snake!'" Avery mimed a whip cracking, complete with the "Chh!" noise. "But, uh, I'm  _not_ a killer. So." He coughed.

She almost smiled, but couldn't quite manage it. Her eyes were kind, but her expression was severe. "Well...thank you, Avery. I really liked  _Rainbow Songs_."

That was Avery's first album, back when he wrote and composed everything himself. A sort of trippy but fun post-punk new wave offering–

"If we're all done admiring each other's farts and crafts..." Jaxxon trailed off, and Rad stifled a giggle up in the cheap seats.

"Yes, of course," Pizzaz answered without looking at him. "Avery, the process here is usually...marginally...fairer and more lawful than it is right now. But, unfortunately...certain parties..." her eyes flicked up and to the side to indicate Jaxxon, "...have stopped all private and public funding for the MBPD, so unless we raise our own money, the city is without a police department."

She wheeled around to face Jaxxon. "All this despite the fact that the entire fire department is dead after that fire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Moonbeam Carnival last week."

"That wasn't my fault!" Rad suddenly yelled out. Everyone turned to face him.

"Um..." He laughed nervously. "What I meant was, whoever did it might have been, for example, walking through the hall while eating flaming cherries jubilee on a stick, and got scared of their own reflection, even though it was really handsome. And then, you know, dropped the flaming cherries on the wood floor."

"That's just one way I imagine the fire could have...hypothetically...been started. Probably."

Awkward silence.

Avery frowned. "Wow, all those firefighters getting lost in a maze of mirrors and a thick, bright veil of flames and smoke, being greeted by nothing but a helpless army of their own reflection, of  _themselves_ , around every turn. And having to watch as they become engulfed by the flames _"_ —everyone, including Jaxxon, looked at him in horror—"...oh. I'm sorry, sir. I wasn't thinking about..." he trailed off.

Awkward silence.

"Korea." Jaxxon finished for him, a faraway look of dread on his face.

Pizzaz sighed, rubbing her forearm awkwardly.

"Anyway, with the fire department gone and the police department in danger of being shut down, I agreed to...an  _unconventional_ trial for you. A high-stakes TV show following your case, taking advantage of your celebrity status to rake in the cash and save the department — and thus, save far more lives than just your own." She crossed her arms, seemingly returning to her old, confident self. "I hope you can understand, Avery...and I wish you luck."

He was once again stunned into silence. Jaxxon, still looking shell-shocked, stumbled down from the bench, and Pizzaz hesitantly put an arm on his back, looking concerned. As the pair walked away, Jaxxon looked over his shoulder and shot Avery a huge  _grin_.

Avery was totally confused. "Wait, so the thing about me getting eaten by the leopards –"

"Could still happen, Spark Plug. The audience would never know it's real. Computer-generated imagery is getting pretty good nowadays," he said without looking back.

"It's really not," Rad offered quietly. "I mean,  _Tron_ , that came out a few years ago, who did they think they were kidding? Sooo dorky-looking."

Furiously, Avery continued to yell at everyone's backs as they were leaving the courtroom.

"Seriously, what the fuck is this shit?! Burden of proof is supposed to be on the accuser, not the accused! My high school years were spent in my tour bus bathroom pretending to have IBS so I didn't have to come out and learn anything, and even I know that! You can't do this! You won't get away with this!" He shook his fists at them, like a villain in a Scooby-Doo episode. 

"You all just basically admitted to  _framing_ me to make money for the department! You know, you could have just  _asked_ me for a few million, and I would have gladly forked it over to avoid  _nearly getting ripped apart by snow leopards_!"

The leopards, at either side of Jaxxon and Pizzaz, pointedly ignored him.

"Seriously, there are so many other legitimate ways you could've raised money! But  _this_? You claim to be a police department and you're committing frameup conspiracies, can you really say you're any better than the criminals you–"

Thankfully, Pizzaz cut him off. "Avery, we did  _not_ frame you." Her eyes narrowed a little. "And honestly, that's exactly the kind of impassioned speech I would expect from a cold and calculating  _killer_." 

Turning to Jaxxon, she added sternly, "That  _doesn't_ mean he's getting eaten by snow leopards, though. We can think of something else to boost the ratings."

_Ratings_? This was his  _life_ , here, and they were talking about  _ratings_? Sure, his life wasn't exactly that of an earnest, self-led artiste before, but...still...

"72 hours, Spark Plug," Jaxxon said, accidentally slamming those large courtroom doors on one of the leopards' tails. There was a dog-like "yip!"

"Oh, no! I'm sorry, Sheena!"

Door opened again, and shut quietly.

Avery was all alone. Both physically and metaphorically, so brutally alone it hurt like a punch that hurts—

The courtroom doors burst open. It was Chrysalis.

"Applikiller! I found some new evidence and I want to see how you react to it. We've got a lie detector set up. One of the bite-y ones."

"Bite-y? What does  _that_ mean?"

"You'll see. Come on."

She dragged him out of the courtroom, and he heard the deafening crash of the two-story-high doors slamming shut one last time.

Justice so totally  _not_ served.


	4. Mystery, Pissed-ery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first episode of _The Avery Mystery_ is on the air! Tons of gossip, drama...and, oh yeah, something about whether or not Avery is guilty or whatever...and more importantly, _Vex Mullery!!!!!!!!!_ (This chapter summary has been approved by Vex Mullery and his publicist.)

"Why do you have your gun out?"

Avery and Chrysalis were riding on one of those moving walkways, like the ones at airports. (Avery thought they were called "flat escalators.")

The walkway was inside a long glass skyway connecting the two halves of the police station. 

_So that's where all the department's money went._

It overlooked quite a beautiful vista: soft, delicate colors of splendid shimmery skyscrapers, with cotton-candy blue and pink neon veins running up and down the sides of the buildings...This was it, all right. Home. Moonbeam fucking City. Avery smiled wistfully as the moving walkway neared the end. The pang of bittersweetness was so deep it made him seethe, gnashing his teeth. But in a weird way, he thought, he was coming to accept his fate.

Or, at least, he was, until he realized Chrysalis had her gun out, pointed at the floor.

"Why do you have your gun–"

"No sudden moves, and we won't have a problem, Applikiller."

Some cheerful saxophone music played in the background.

Awkward silence. (Except for the "flat escalator" music.) 

Avery and Chrysalis both stood painfully still. Chrysalis kept her gun trained on the floor.

"What's wrong...?" Avery whispered. "Did one of Jaxxon's leopards follow us down here?" He looked around wildly.

"I said, hold still, unless you want a bullet in your head."

The saxophone still played pleasantly in the background. Chrysalis' tone of voice was even and calm, yet there was something very, very deadly serious about it. Avery decided to cooperate.

They reached the observation room, where Rad was trying to lean casually against an AV cart without it rolling backwards.

"Hey, Apple Killer!" He kicked off the cart coolly, with a smile. 

The cart careened straight into the nearest wall, with a loud crash.

"Oops."

Avery sat down and noticed the VHS tape that had fallen off. "Ooh, are we watching the Canadian children's TV show _Jolly Closet_? With Badger Bob? That's my favorite!" He peered at Rad more closely. "Hey...You know, that one kid looks kind of like you–"

"Moving on!" Rad interrupted. With lightning-fast reflexes that would have been better utilized in meeting his duties on the force, he picked up the tape and attempted to break it in half over his knee, like it was a karate breaking board. He winced as the tape smashed invincibly into his leg.

"Ow ow ow!"

Chrysalis, a threatening edge to her voice: "Rad, _focus_ and come help me cuff this guy, or _so help me God_  I will re-enact the video we're about to see, on you, twice as painfully."

Rad gulped.

With pitiful doe eyes, Avery continued to guess as he was cuffed: "What are we watching?  _Bulls-eye the Violence Gu_ y...? I always loved watching that in science class. Had the best theme song, too. _Bull...bull...bull...bull...bulls-eye, the violence guy_!"

No answer.

"What about _Reading Rainbow_? You know, that children's show about the drag queens who 'read' people and sip tea?"

Still no answer. He was being cuffed rather unnecessarily roughly.

"What's...wrong with you two?" Avery asked. "I mean, I get that I'm apparently a murderer and all"—crossing his legs in a kittenish manner—"but why are you acting so weird? And like it takes both of you to cuff me?"

_Still_ no answer.

Chrysalis stood between him and the CRT television and turned it on. Some sparks flew out of it but it was otherwise okay, displaying a screen of white noise.

"This is actually a video starring _you_ , Avery," she said, eyeing him warily. She still had her gun ready.

_Wait...Oh NO, not_ that _video_...

"Ok, in my defense, my agent froze all my bank accounts as punishment for badmouthing her in an interview, and I was super desperate for money. Desperate enough to suck a tapeworm out of someone's–"

"Uh, _no_!" Chrysalis interrupted. "Not that kind of video, sicko. But...even sicker. This is footage from the Grande Hotel, the night of the murder," she said. "Footage of you killing Appliqué."

_Footage of you killing Appliqué._

Fear greater than any Avery had ever known suddenly twisted like a knife in his gutless gut, but for once, he didn't freak out. It was kind of beyond that point. 

"Okay, play the tape," he said with calm poise that felt foreign to his own ears. Like the voice of Hannibal Lecter speaking through him. Why the fuck not, he was ready to jog the impossible memory of killing another human being.

Chrysalis pressed play. A ribbon of blood flashed on the screen, and then it went black. Avery screamed.

"Ugh, I must have forgotten to rewind the tape," she explained very nonchalantly, as if skipping to the end of a tape of the country's hottest celebrity getting strangled to death was just a minor and annoying inconvenience, like someone else using your toothbrush.

And there it was. Sparks Avery, in one of the showy rococo gold Grande Hotel suites. Straddling Applique on top of a California King. There was no question about it; it was pretty high-definition. At first, he thought they were about to have sex, although he still had no recollection of any of it.

Weirdly, the camera angle made it look like someone was filming them, although neither one of them was looking.

And even weirder, Avery was _singing_. Well, if you could even call it that. It sounded like a whale song on helium. It sounded like Yoko Ono singing "Cheshire Cat Cry."

But even all that noise still couldn't distract from the inherent creepiness, or sexiness, of the scene at hand. Avery's knees were digging into Appliqué's chest, Avery's bob of ruby-red hair shrouding his fair face.

Back in real-time, Chrysalis coughed awkwardly.

"Are we about to..." Avery muttered to himself, cocking his head in confusion.

Rad turned his head away from the screen, fidgeting awkwardly. He drummed his fingerless-gloved fingers on the desk; Avery couldn't tell if it was out of agitation, arousal, or both, but seemed to find his answer with Rad's, "Ew, Chrysalis! What _is_ this?"

Appliqué's expression was unreadable. Was he scared? Enjoying this? The only thing that was clear was, he was completely orange in color. His neon veins under the skin were glowing bright orange, making him look like a human jack-o'-lantern. His spiky hair, his signature hammer pants — all a garish pumpkin orange. Avery felt like he was watching himself seduce one of those Circus Peanut marshmallow candies.

Seduce...or strangle.

It couldn't be real. It just couldn't fucking be. Avery sat there, astronomically powerless, and watched himself on screen, beginning to take away an actual human life. It was just crazy. He felt like he'd been forced to watch this for hours, even though it had only been a couple of seconds. His brain felt like melted, expired gelato as he watched himself become the star of a real live  _snuff film_ , strangling another person to death. The camera began to shake and whoever was behind it whimpered out, "Stop!", but still kept filming the unearthly scene. Avery's forearms pulsed with sinewy veins, although less colorful veins than Appliqué's, as he pushed the other man down with such inhuman strength, Appliqué's whole body was nearly hidden in the folds of the mattress. The mattress itself began to break.

Without thinking, Avery (in the present moment) jumped up and starting screaming at the screen, screeching, screaming, yelling for his past self to _STOP_. Everything on the screen was a blur, spinning wildly, as he got so close to the TV screen he couldn't see anything but pixels, and the static electricity that gathered on the glass stung him on the nose. He screamed, and couldn't even hear Chrysalis screaming back at him to sit down.

On the video, the bedsprings were breaking with a sickening  _crunch_ , and probably some parts of Appliqué, too, as ribbons of blood began spurting out, and the orange became less orange...

Avery crumpled into a despairing mess on the floor. This was only a nightmare. Just a bad dream. He was going to wake up, in a nice warm _bed_ — _OH GOD DON'T THINK ABOUT BEDS_ —

Both Rad and Chrysalis were shaken, too. The room was silent and still again, for a moment.

Then, a knock on the door. Chrysalis went to open it.

The young man standing there, despite his baby blues, was more strongly pigmented than most people in Moonbeam City. Not like Appliqué — the young man was black, which was uncommon in this city. Which seemed a bit suspect, actually, like Moonbeam was a racist place to live, or something, but perhaps it was all just a coincidence, and had nothing to do with how the city's founder, Patrick Bagel, had been an artist who not only refused to paint portraits of minorities, but was also a huge Nazi.

He flinched back upon seeing Avery.

"Those handcuffs will hold him, right?" he asked Chrysalis nervously.

"Absolutely, don't worry," she said, not sounding too confident.

The two of them gave Avery a wide berth and the young man sat down at the other side of the small room, with its dropped ceiling that had water stains from leaks. Again, Avery wondered who the hell was in charge of managing the department's budget.

"This is Jet. He's a — what did you call yourself? — 'an investigative photojournalist'? _Not_ a paparazzo?"

Jet smiled weakly at her with a trembling thumbs-up, barely able to take his eyes off Avery, who tried to recognize this guy out of the thousands of paparazzi he'd encountered over the last few years.

" _Jet_ ," Rad tried the word out on his tongue with a delicate flourish. He walked over briskly to shake Jet's hand. " _Jet_! What an um, _exotic_ , unusual name! I'm Rad, and I assume you've already met Chrysalis. Erm, how do you like it here in Moonbeam City so far? What country are you from originally...?"

With the facial-expression equivalent of a facepalm, Jet said, "I actually grew up only a few blocks from the Grande Hotel."

He continued to send shifty, fearful glances Avery's way, as if any second Avery would burst out of those handcuffs like a lab experiment gone wrong.

"As I was saying, Jet here works for _Moonbeam City Weekly_ magazine. And he also works weekends as a night auditor at the Grande Hotel...and he's the one you filmed the scene you just saw. Tell us what happened, Jet."

Jet's gaze was still fixed on Avery. "O-ok...Well, since I work nights at the hotel, I saw Appliqué and Avery check in...together. I thought, if they're secret gay lovers, this would be the biggest scoop for the magazine since...well, ever!" He had a starry look in his eyes. "If I was the one to get this story...I was thinking, man, I could wind up working for _The Enquirer_ , or something, who knows what could happen, right?"

Rad nodded; Chrysalis sighed good-naturedly.

Jet had a faraway look of wonderment on his face, which quickly faded.

"Anyway, I went upstairs and knocked on their door." He quickly added, "So I wasn't doing anything illegal! Just gathering intel. But the door was cracked open, and I heard a scream! So I went in."

"And the first thing you thought was, 'Let's record this!' Not to try and stop me, or call for help?" asked Avery.

Jet looked at him fearfully. 

"You know, I'm...pretty sure you guys aren't supposed to have the witness and killer being questioned in the same room..."

Chrysalis sighed again. "Well, unfortunately, our department is broke, so we're kind of not doing the whole 'proper legal procedure' thing. Instead, we're...uh...well, the people from  _Crimezappers_ signed a contract with us, to film a spinoff reality TV series about Avery's case."

As if on cue, some cameramen, the director, the host, and a few others filed into the small room, making it feel much smaller. The sound guy accidentally swung the mic right into the TV cart. It was sent flying into the wall again.

"And here's the crew"—Chrysalis glared daggers at everyone—"about an _hour_ late."

"Vex Mullery is _always_ fashionably late," a booming, full-toned, yet pleasing and soothing bass voice answered her.

The man stepped out of the shadows of window blinds that were, as always, nowhere to be seen. Vex Mullery, revealed in all his sophisticated, cosmopolitan glory. He shot everyone a fabulous smile, especially Chrysalis.

" _Vex Mullery_!" Rad shrieked excitedly.

Vex looked puzzled at first, then a look of recognition crossed his face.

"Oh! Officer Rad Cunningham! The 'poop' guy! Ha! That was one of my favorite episodes. Boosted our ratings, too. People are still talking about it — fact, if you could mention it a couple times, that would be great...I'm sure our viewers would just _eat that shit up_."

Rad's protests were interrupted as the camera crew began loudly shuffling around and setting up, banging into things and each other in the small area.

Conceding defeat, Jet shrugged and removed his denim jacket. "I can't believe this is seriously happening right now."

"Trust me, I'm as appalled as you are at how unethical this is—" Chrysalis began.

"No, it's great!" Jet smiled. "This gives me the chance to promote  _Moonbeam City Weekly_! Plus, I get to be on TV, which...Awesome!"

"I know, right?" Rad edged out subtly in front of him to be closer to the camera, and peered into it.

"Camera's not on yet, sir."

"I know, just fixing my hair. Gotta redeem myself in the eyes of all my fans," he half-sighed.

The cameraman gave him a weird look and resumed setting up.

Rad smoothed his hair with Dippity-do gel, combing it into a perfect coiffure. Avery marveled at the blue stripe on the side; it was difficult to tell whether it was dyed that way, or just the byproduct of a lustrous shimmer.

Avery almost didn't notice when the show started up. Vex Mullery threw on his long detective's overcoat and smiled genially at the millions of people watching.

"Hello — as you all know by now, I'm Vex Mullery...but this is not _Crimezappers_. Join me today as we uncover... _The Avery Mystery_. We're coming to you live, from the Moonbeam City Police Department."

The camera swung in Avery's direction, and he jerked his head up, surprised. Rad and Jet vied for their place in the spotlight. Jet stood up and elbowed Rad between the ribs. Rad grabbed him by the shoulder and shoved him backward into his seat. He gave the audience an enticing eyebrow waggle.

"And I'm Rad Cunningham! And if you believed what I said about poop on my episode of  _Crimezappers_ , then you should know, I'm actually just a really good actor and didn't mean any of it–"

"He totally _did_ ," Jet interrupted, stepping forward and onto Rad's foot, "and if you want to know more about Rad's poop fetish, Dazzle's sex addiction — with a complimentary centerfold! — or Chrysalis's affair with a dolphin, then check out  _Moonbeam City Weekly_ in print or online. I'm future editor-in-chief Jet Grooms–"

Chrysalis stepped in front of him. "Okay, we don't need to make this case even _more_ unlawful than it already is, by wiping your dirty rag all over it!"

The room was silent and seemed confused.

She sighed, crossing her arms self-protectively. "Like, 'rag,' as in, magazine? 'Dirty rag,' 'dirty magazine'? Get the joke?"

Silence.

"Also, I did not have sex with a dolphin! It was Dazzle who did that! Sort of..."

"Wow!" Vex laughed his full, handsome fake laugh for the benefit of the viewers. "It looks like  _The Avery Mystery_ already has lots of juicy action going on!" 

He stepped over to Avery with a kind of comradely, yet menacing look on his face, and said, "But let's get to the _heart_ of that mystery."

He shooed Rad, Jet and Chrysalis away, leaving himself standing next to a deer-in-headlights, guilty-looking Sparks Avery.

Vex continued: "Just a year ago, alt-pop musician Sparks Avery was Moonbeam City's media darling. A young, fresh-faced, trusting soul, who just loved making music, hanging out with his fans, and donating to charity. But now, after _the murder of Appliqué Johnson_...he sits before me in prison garb." Vex pointed at Avery like he was a zoo animal to gawk at.

"Originally, this show was going to be about Avery's possible quest for justice and redemption — giving him 72 hours to prove, with the help of the Moonbeam City Police, that he didn't kill Appliqué."

Vex paced in awkward circles around Avery's chair, trying to create movement in the shot while still staying in frame. Avery's eyes followed him dizzily, hypnotized, still barely able to believe all this was really happening.

"The evidence against him was strong, from the forensic evidence to the handwritten letter signed by Avery himself...But we were going to give him a _chance_ ," Vex said in a preachy, smug tone. "But then, this young man here, Jet Grooms"—Vex dragged him into the frame, then shoved him away again—"an investigative photojournalist for  _Moonbeam City Weekly_ , submitted some cold, hard video evidence to the police. We'll play that for you now."

After the clip was done playing, Vex continued the interview.

"So, the question on everyone's mind is... _YOU TWO GET OUT OF THE SHOT_!!" Vex yelled suddenly at Rad and Jet, who were up to their antics again, striking poses for the camera and waving at the viewers.

"... _the question on everyone's mind is_ , what went wrong, Avery? What made you... _snap_?" Vex asked, sitting as casually as he could, what with his stiffish, reserved nature, and the small room being crowded as hell with the crew.

"Was it jealousy? Did you think killing Appliqué would get you your fans back? Your fame?"

Avery merely shook his head.

Vex laughed. "Well, don't be shy, boy! This is your chance to at least try and justify yourself. Your horrible, horrible self." (The word "horrible" in a neutral, pert announcer voice.)

The crew standing around him, all these crazy characters hanging on his next word, the impossibility of all this...it was too much for Avery, but he steeled himself and gave the same explanation from earlier, which surprisingly still held up:

"First, I want to say I'm incredibly sorry for what I've done..." He breathed out hard through his nose. "But I'd like everyone to know that I have absolutely no memory of doing this. I had no idea Appliqué was dead until I was unexpectedly arrested yesterday.

"Unfortunately, there's no doubt that I'm the killer," he continued bravely. "But I was under the influence of glitz at the time, because my agent and bodyguard have been forcing me to take it...And as terrible as I feel — as guilty as I feel — I know I don't deserve to die for something that was out of my control."

Another awkward silence. The camera crew exchanged glances, like, "Wait, what?"

"Wow!" Vex yelled.

Avery looked at him, confused.

"That was great!" Vex said and gave him a million-dollar smile. "I don't even care if you're telling the truth or not. What a great _twist_! This should get us tons of viewers!" (He whispered that last part because, of course, the cameras were still on.)

"Intoxication defense...involuntary consumption. I can't believe I didn't think of that when your agent admitted to drugging you!" Chrysalis gasped, sounding horrified at herself.

"Can glitz do that to people? Make them...kill...?" Rad trailed off, looking at the television again, as if it were now haunted by playing that tape.

Chrysalis considered it. "Well, we never got a chance to learn much about glitz," she said, being careful to avoid the whole topic about how the MBPD were the ones who created glitz in the first place in order to make the department look good when they put an end to it.

"And, epidemiologically speaking, we can't know for sure based on the overall response of Moonbeam's glitz addicts whether there might be some rare and unexpected reactions–"

Vex yawned very loudly, somehow still in an announcer-voice.

He withdrew a small machine from god-knows-where that looked like a blood pressure monitor, but (Avery realized as Vex strapped it onto his arm) was actually a lie detector.

"Ooh, this is my favorite!" Rad said gleefully. He pumped his fist in the air.

The lie detector was Velcro-ed tightly around Avery's arm. He just sighed, submitting to whatever insanity was in store next.

"This lie detector is going to tell us once and for all whether Sparks Avery is telling the truth," Vex narrated.

He was looking at the camera solemnly. A lighting technician turned off the lights in the room (which were a bit dim anyway because of all the dead bugs in the troffers) and replaced it with a single super bright spotlight on Avery and Vex, now sitting across from each other.

Avery had to admit, with his orange jumpsuit and Vex's snappy detective overcoat, they both definitely looked the part.

Vex smiled ominously in the limelight.

"Okay, let's calibrate this thing, first. Is your name Sparks Avery?"

"Yes."

The lie detector, after a moment, displayed a green light and made an agreeable "beep."

"Okay. Here's a slightly tougher one...Last year, did you make a sex tape in which you did unspeakable things involving a tapeworm?"

"..."

Finally, with a grudging look of, "I didn't want anyone else to _know_ about that," on his face: " _Okay_ , okay. Yes." 

_Sigh_.

"But in my defense–"

"Did you _PURPOSELY_ kill Appliqué Johnson? Do you remember killing him?" Vex suddenly yelled, springing up out of his chair and getting in Avery's personal space. It was all too familiar a feeling.

"No! I didn't mean to kill Appliqué! At least, I don't think I did...at the time...I don't remember...any of it...No."

He breathed another sigh. A moment, that brutal lingering moment of truth...A matter of life and death. 

Everyone waited with bated breath. Avery felt incredibly uneasy, and wondered whether the fact that his heart was racing uncontrollably at the prospect the machine was faulty would create a self-fulfilling prophecy, where it said he was lying, but then in a sense the machine _would_ be faulty–

"Beep."

He was telling the truth, everyone finally fucking realized.

 

-

 

An intense, almost sacred-feeling silence settled over the room. Nobody dared say anything, until finally, Vex, ever the grand narrator of things, simply said, " _Hmm_."

Quiet built up and endured, like a new snowfall.

Avery suddenly flew into a rage, trying to tear apart his handcuffs again to no avail.

"That's all you have to say? I've been telling the truth this _WHOLE DAMN TIME_ , and that's all anybody has to say?"

Still, nothing. Avery sat back down in a huff, with no one having to point a gun at him for him to do so.

" _Well_ , that doesn't rule anything out. Sociopaths are good at passing lie detector tests," Vex said angrily.

At least, as much as that perfectly polished announcer voice could allow for anger.

Chrysalis shook her head and lifted up Avery's arm, examining the simple-looking device.

"It's impossible that he was lying, with this machine." She set his arm back down.

"This detector releases an MAO-inhibiting group of chemicals combined with your run-of-the-mill truth serum. Right through the skin. It's actually really interesting how it affects the hypothalamus–"

Vex interrupted her. "While I'm sure our audience would _love_ to hear more about that, sometime," he shared a smile with the camera, "They're probably more interested in getting some juicy, honest answers out of Sparks Avery, now that we know he can't lie."

Avery drooped his head down to his chest so hard it hurt his spine. He left it hanging there and whined to himself.

Hopefully he'd be getting the hell out of here soon. Or put through some long rehab program. Or whatever they did to people who were forced to be on drugs that made them accidentally kill people.

"Call 1-800-MYSTERY with your questions for Avery, that he has to answer truthfully! If your question is picked, you'll win free tickets to Roachella, featuring a concert with a hologram of Appliqué!"

Rad whipped out a comically large Motorola analog cell phone with a huge antenna (as advanced as Moonbeam City technology was in some ways, it was still the 1980s, after all).

"Wait, to get the letter Y, do you have to dial 9 twice? Ugh, alphanumeric keypads are so confusing." He laughed quietly to himself, shaking his head.

"No, just once — wait, Rad, why are you calling in?!"

Chrysalis snatched the phone out of his hand and the two of them began fighting over it like children. Vex ignored them as they slammed into the back of his chair in their tussle.

"Looks like we have our first caller now! What's your name, caller?"

A bright, peppy female voice blasted over the speakers with a bright starburst of static: "Um, hi! My name's Razzmatazz Smith."

"Now that's a good ol' fashioned name. What's your question for Avery, Razzmatazz?"

"Um..." she giggled nervously. "So I totally shipped Avery and Appliqué, and I was, like, so bummed to find out Avery, like, brutally murdered him and stuff! But then, I thought, like, I bet Avery totally had gay feelings for Appliqué, and he couldn't deal with them, so he killed him! Like, Avery literally killed the rainbow, 'cause of Appliqué's rainbow colors! It's, like, so symbolic! Feels! So I have to know, is Avery gay?"

"That's a sensational question, Miss Razzmatazz!" Vex said with dollar signs in his eyes. 

A Nielsen Machine™ set up by the crew showed that the viewer count had just increased by 1.5 million. Avery saw it too.

He immediately became even paler, if that was actually possible.

_Okay. Calm down. Calm the fuck down. Lie. Get yourself to believe the lie. You're straight. Yep. Straight. That's the truth. You're not gay. Look at Chrysalis over there, fighting with Rad for that cell phone. Look at how...booby her boobs are. And her thin, willowy arms. Yeah, straight guys are into that, right?_

And Rad's burly arms stretching against the material of his pleather jacket tightly, as he grapples with the cell phone, straining, a muffled grunt escaping his perfect, pillowy lips as he fought with brawny force with the phone; Avery imagined himself on the other end and being wrestled, pushed up against the wall by Rad, Rad's strong, powerful hands running roughly up and down his body—

"Avery? Hello? Is this a difficult question for you?" Vex startled him out of his fantasies.

He gulped, hard. "I-I don't have to answer this. It's not relevant to my case at all." 

He bit his lip while maintaining a pouty face, fixing his eyes on a spot on the floor. His heart was pounding out of his chest, pounding in his ears.

Vex scoffed and rolled his eyes as an aside to the camera.

"Pleading the fifth, eh? Well, you know what that means! Avery is _definitely_ gay!" 

Phones began ringing off the hooks in what sounded like the next room over, and Vex continued, "We just got tons of new callers, no doubt with lots of follow-up questions! Just hold on, and remember, 1-800-MYSTERY is not a toll-free line–"

Suddenly, Avery lept out of his seat and, screaming at the top of his lungs, tackled Vex as best he could while in handcuffs. Vex disappeared out of frame as he fell.

"Fuck you, asshole! I am _not_ gay!"

Before anyone could do anything about what probably looked like the beginning of another Avery murder spree, a searing, white-hot burst of pain shot through Avery's arm, scalding its way up the elbow to the shoulder.

"I'm...not gay– _OWW JESUS CHRIST_!" The pain was so bad he thought he'd dislocated his arm. What was that, a taser?

He continued to scream like a wild animal.

A faint little "beep" noise could be heard over the screams. The lie detector light was...red.

"It shocks you when you lie...Yeah. You all probably...picked up on that already," Chrysalis said quietly. She and Rad were still holding the phone, but they were both frozen in place.

Vex slung Avery aside easily and stood back up to be in the camera's view again. He dusted himself off and quickly fixed his silvered hair.

"Ahem. Well, that's all the time we have for today, folks! Thanks for joining me today with... _The Avery_... _The 'Gay-very' Mystery_...Ha-ha...Ouch!"

Avery had kicked him in the shin. 

"You little shit! Anyway...Now that Avery's closet door is wide open, on the next episode we'll find out what kinds of skeletons are hiding in there! You won't want to miss it, folks!"

Vex winked at the camera, and limped away.


	5. We All Scream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Avery nearly gets his ass killed. Rad tries to teach him to fight, but it soon becomes obvious that Avery wants to make love, not war.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (So sorry for taking forever on this chapter!)

Avery woke up to an eyeful of wood. Confused, he unglued his sticky face from the bar countertop.

"Mmph."

Yellow lights shined off the varnish. Avery dizzily looked up to see the bartender staring back at him. The bartender played the part aptly, cleaning a glass with a cloth.

"Who passes out after five drinks?" He smirked at Avery.

The bar was quiet. A busboy was hefting the stools over the tables, the lights were dimmed. They looked to be closing up for the night.

"I don't know, someone who's been roofied, maybe?" Avery answered, half-sarcastic, half-appalled. He lifted his blue neon-rimmed shot glass, wincing at the brightness. The hangover was beginning to sink in. 

"Wait...where am I?"

"Bob's Bodego, pal. I was just about to wake you up, we're closed. Don't have to go home but you can't stay here, etc., etc."

"Wait, but–" he staggered off the bar stool and nearly slipped in his own spilled drink, "Seriously, I don't know how I got here! I don't know where home _is_!"

The bartender rolled his eyes. "S'far as I know, your house is still at the top of the hill in Diamond Crest Estates, where you left it." He started wiping down the bar with the cloth.

"Not anymore. I had to sell my house to make bail," he said, slumping back into the stool.

He actually wasn't sad about it at all, though. Living in Diamond Crest had felt like such a lie. Sure, he'd gone along with it, but really, who needed man-made Jacuzzi hot springs, and who needed Smellitizers in every room? (Smellitizers are these weird vents that pump out smells — they have them at Disney to keep the whole place smelling like freshly baked cookies.) Well, he did miss _that_. He'd picked the smells of musk and civet and fresh male sweat. He'd turned down twenty test samples from a lab until he got the sexy man-scent he wanted.

"Hope you don't mind, I let everybody draw on your face when you were passed out," the bartender added.

Avery looked around for a mirror or other reflective surface, and, when that failed, grabbed the cloth from the bartender and rubbed helplessly at his face.

"Permanent marker, buddy!" the bartender laughed until he was about to be sick.

Avery sighed and left. A cutesy little bell tinkled as he opened the door.

"And hey, thanks for the business!" the bartender called after him, taking some cash and making it rain all over the counter.

It was cold and nippy outside, and Avery shivered in his iridescent mesh tank top and Kente cloth pants. He supposed he looked a bit like a clown now, like Jaxxon had said, what with the shaggy red hair and the colorful outfit and the drawings on his face...whatever they were of.

He'd come to this seedy area of Lower-Mid Uptown hoping that it would be a good place to get a stiff drink, where nobody would recognize him. No such luck; he'd passed out in a sea of ridicule and drunkenly-signed autographs. Gotta make the fans happy, even the ironic ones. 

Can't even get a drink in peace. He wished the sky would swallow him up — or at least just hide him for a little while so he could be left the fuck alone.

What time was it? It was still dark. He couldn't make out the green digital numbers on the "clock tower" standing tall in the middle of the city. Before he had time to contemplate how stupid the idea of a digital clock tower with tiny-ass numbers was, the question was answered with three loud, fuzzy synthesizer bass beats coming from the clock. BOOM BOOM BOOM. _Okay, okay. 3 AM._ His poor, hungover brain bounced around in his skull. Sometimes he really hated this city. 

He wished he would have asked for a little hair of the dog, back at the bar.

It really was freezing. He shoved his hands into his thin Kente cloth pockets. That didn't help, his fingers were still turning to ice. He began to feel sort of...homeless. Which, he _was_. Nothing symbolic or poetic about these feelings of being out of place, uprooted, adrift; he was actually fucking homeless. He'd been sleeping the past few nights in a self-storage place with what valuables he had left, and supposed he should be grateful — not every homeless person gets to have a designer contempo-casual couch to sleep on.

It was really, really cold out, though. He swore he could see bits of frost whirling in glittery bursts in the clear night sky, but it wasn't cold enough for snow. He shoved his hands deeper into his pockets. A train ratcheted above his head on the overpass, horn wailing loudly and piteously, shaking the ground. 

He was passing a white brick factory building. Lightbulbs in wire mesh cages hung from chains, casting off an eerie blue light. It looked like someone had tried to take a bat to a couple of the bulbs, so the cages made sense. Avery removed his hands from his pockets and hugged himself tightly. It was now deathly still and quiet, except for the creak of the hanging chains, back and forth, the lights like fateful ghosts, watching without eyes.

He picked up the pace. Based on the position of the clock tower...which always pointed south...if he turned right here, he'd be going east toward the Michael McDonald Parkway...then the storage place was on the left. Or was it the right? Or was the Pkwy actually west of here?

... _Shit_.

He tried not to freak out. He needed to find the Parkway. It was better lit and there was more traffic. Or, rather, it was less _creepily_ lit, and there was less _creepy_ traffic — he heard a few muffled voices as he went between buildings, trying to find a shortcut.

The muffled voices were coming closer, but he couldn't tell where they were coming from. He stared ahead, covering ground, but the voices were still nipping at his ears like wind. Finally, he stopped and turned around, fishing for his car keys, which was the only weapon he had.

Oh wait. He didn't have his car keys, because he no longer owned his DeLorean. His beautiful DeLorean that, instead of being painted, was covered in iridescent holographic wrap. Avery wanted to cry just thinking about how the obnoxious shiny motherfucker was now probably in the hands of some drug dealer getting coke and steamy sex smell all over it. 

_America's brightest car for America's brightest star_ , the media used to say.

And last week  _Moonbeam City Weekly_ had published an article, "Murder of Appliqué was _NOT_ Avery's First!" According to the article, one of their interns was blinded by the light reflecting off the car, stumbled in front of it, and Avery ran right over him.

Which was totally false! Avery was...99% sure. He did wear his sunglasses at night, after all.

 

-

 

"Avery," a voice called out behind him.

"Uh, yeah?" he turned around, his hands still fumbling around in his thin pockets as if some pepper spray would just magically appear.

The guy had a gun.

"Don't scream or I'll blow your head off."

He was this mousy, greasy-brown-haired and greasy-mustached guy. A tall, overgrown beanpole in a too-big orange tweed suit, and his fingers shook on the gun as he stood pointing it, pigeon-toed. Even Avery wasn't too scared of him, and tried to keep up the bravado.

"Who are you?" Avery crossed his arms in front of his chest, which seemed smart because it could maybe keep him from dying and also look intimidating and stuff.

"Name's Malachite, but you can call me _Mal_ , for short," the guy gestured with his gun as he talked, and huffed and puffed his drooping mustache away from his mouth.

"Okay, and why do you want to die, Mal?" Avery forced himself to take a few steps closer to the barrel of that gun.

Mal's bony hand was still shaking, but he said, "Nice try."

He gave a fish-lipped little smirk, his mouth curling and spasming.

"There's a...trigger that happens, that gives you your superhuman strength..." he thumbed the trigger of the gun, "...and you don't know what that is," he shrugged. "So you know what, I'm not really worried. Say goodnight."

"Goodnight–wait, uhh...I didn't mean to say that..."

Mal looked at him, like, _are you serious_?

Avery felt the ground rush up as he collapsed to his knees. "Puh-leeze don't kill me!" he cried. "I didn't mean to k-kill Appliqué!"

Mal rolled his eyes, which were as twitchy as the rest of him. 

"Yeah, I know, that's not what I'm here about," he said. "You did your _job_ , and now we have no other use for you."

"No! — I can be _super_ useful, I promise!"

"..."

Avery cleared his throat meaningfully and softened his features into a slight pout.

"..."

"..."

It looked like Mal still wasn't getting it, so, still on his knees, Avery leaned forward just a tad, deepening the pout.

"...Can you fucking  _stop_ that?"

"Sorry."

"..."

Avery sniffed resignedly. He stood up, then made a sudden grab for the gun. Mal was faster. 

"You're a real coquet, Avery," Mal rolled his eyes again.

"I am not a cokehead! I took glitz for a while, but–"

"Look, I'm a busy man, so let's wrap this up." 

Mal cocked the hammer of the shotgun — it was weird to bring a shotgun to an alley fight, but Mal was definitely the type. His hand started shaking more convulsively and he grinned like a fucking maniac.

Avery panicked, looking around as if someone was just going to come out from the wings and save him.

But no one did.

A gust of cold wind blew like the kiss of death, and one of the hanging bulbs, casting its bluish light, swung into Avery's vision.

Blue light. That had been Appliqué's usual color of choice.

Suddenly, Avery smashed the light in its cage into Mal's jugular as hard as he could. It didn't seem to do much damage, but Mal was caught off guard, swinging backwards, his tall lanky frame and loose-fitting pants making him look like a man on stilts.

Avery grabbed the gun from him, but, typically enough, lost his grip on it and it skittered across the pavement and past a warehouse door into the building.

They both ran for the gun. Heart absolutely fucking racing, Avery had the foresight to think about shutting the door from the outside, leaving the gun inside so there was no risk of being trapped in the dark with Mal and the gun.

Mal tripped him and kept running. Avery felt a rush of burning pain in his elbow as it slammed to the ground first. But he launched himself up and managed to wedge himself between Mal and the door, guarding it with his body, polishing the knob with his hands.

"Out of the fucking way," Mal growled, face twisted and convulsed, but at the same time, he was still smiling.

"No thanks," Avery donkey-kicked Mal as he tried to pry Avery's hands off the knob.

Mal slammed Avery's head into the door. He saw stars, and not the celebrity kind.

"Help! Help me!" he screamed as loud as he could, turning around to face Mal and trying to wrestle him to the ground, to no avail. Mal was bonier, but more than a head taller.

Mal shoved him down and rushed into the building. Avery tried to get up, but his head felt...cramped. No one had ever slammed his head against a wall before. Well, there were a _few_ times his head had been slammed into a headboard, but those were accidents.

He couldn't get up. He tried to will whatever his secret superhuman powers were, even though they had done way too much fucking damage already. But nope. He felt like a kid staring at a mug on a table and trying to get it to levitate, before finally giving up and realizing you're just a dumbass.

Mal was back with the gun. He hovered over Avery, clearly taking great joy in all of this and practically having an epileptic fit. It looked like he might even drop the gun, but he didn't.

Well, this was it.

"Goodnight," Avery said, with Shakespearean line delivery.

_Bang_.

Avery screamed as one of the hanging lights shattered and a curtain of bright sparks flew around him. 

Now it was darker. Mal raised his gun, on the alert.

"Hey, what the fuck–"

"Moonbeam City Police Department. Put down your weapon and get on the ground!"

The voice sounded familiar, a dead even mix of goofy and cool.

Hey, wait a minute...It was Officer Cunningham! 

Mal did not relent. "Go fuck yourself, copper!"

"Oh, I intend to, later, thinking about this moment with great respect."

"..."

"About blowing off your head, I mean."

"..."

"Come on. Give it _up_ , Bad Kite."

"Bad...what?...Who are you?" Mal pointed the gun wildly in all directions, unable to find the source of the disembodied voice now that the light was shot. "Show yourself!"

_Oh. Malachite. Mal-a-kite. Bad kite_. Sigh.  Avery knew he was in a bad headspace to be able to understand Rad's puns. 

Rad came closer to Mal, getting close enough to the light that he could be seen in all his violaceous glory...and there were shadows from window blinds on his face again.

"Come _on_ , seriously?" Avery yelled, his limbs all rag-doll on the ground.

"..."

Rad and Mal stared at him, confused, before continuing their thrilling standoff.

"Last chance, Mal. Put down your gun."

Mal's trigger finger quivered in response, but he did not obey.

Rad, trying to hide his nerves, whimpered quietly and rearranged his stance before he said, "Well...get ready for your kite to be flying at _half mast_."

"'Half mast' is for flags, not kites, asshole."

"Well, that's good information for a soon-to-be-dead man to know, isn't it?" Rad taunted.

Mal just laughed, insanely gleeful in his oversized orange tweed suit. He began to...hum?

He tossed aside the shotgun like it was a silly plaything, and lifted up Avery's head and pointed it at Rad.

Avery tried to get away from whatever weird thing was going on here, but he was mesmerized by the humming, and by Rad. He started to...feel things. Well, of course he'd "felt things" looking at the officer before, but this was different. His vision narrowed. He felt...primal. Something thrummed within him, something bright and flaming and teeth-baring. He stood up without realizing what he was doing.

Mal continued to hum maniacally.

Rad looked at him. "Is that the limited edition of 'Sew Good' by Appliqué, you're humming?"

Mal nodded his head and smirked, not stopping his humming.

"And that's why you're...Sew Good! Sew Good! Stitchin' me together...This stupid officer is going to dieee..."

"Those aren't the lyrics," Rad said nervously.

Avery tried his hardest to keep his limbs from moving, but he was a total puppet. He took a menacing step toward Rad, who halfheartedly raised his gun.

He pointed it back and forth at Mal, then Avery, then Mal again.

"Hey, he's...mind-controlling you, isn't he?" Rad waved his free hand in front of Avery's face. "Look, remember me? Avery?"

Unfortunately, Avery was just as bad at willing his powers to go away as he was at summoning them. The more frustrated he got, the more it worked up some kind of white-hot violent urge that was so unlike him he felt like he was outside his own body, watching it happen.

_Watching it happen_. Just like when he watched the video of himself killing Appliqué.

Rad was at a nice angle to incapacitate Mal — a nice shot in the shoulder would stop the sinister singing. But Avery, trying as hard as he could to pull his own arm back; mentally picturing doing it, focusing; ended up just dully staring at his stupid arm as it _bent the barrel of Rad's gun up in the air OH MY GOD._

_Didn't that only happen in cheesy 80s action movies?_

"Gah...!" Rad was so flustered he pointed the new end of the gun at Avery like it would still work.

Avery slapped the useless gun easily out of the way and wrapped both his hands around Rad's throat. The officer's green eyes shocked wide open as he tried to tear off Avery's crushing clamp on his windpipe. He shook his head slightly, trying to speak but failing, as if some words might help.

"Sew Good! Sew Good!" Mal chanted from the sidelines, like he was getting off on this or something. He sidled up close to the officer and whispered in his ear, greasy mustache touching it–

Well, Mal didn't have the chance to whisper anything. Avery saw Mal's orange suit and suddenly the savage anger redoubled, twisting through Avery and propelling him like an angry helicopter towards Mal. Mal ducked Avery's right hook, and, crouched against the wall, rooted around frantically in his breast pocket for something.

" _Why did I wear orange, fucking orange, how did I forget, ORANGE_!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, as screaming was the only weapon he had left.

Rad, still shaken from nearly having his throat crushed, managed to go pick up Mal's shotgun off the ground. He proceeded to do nothing with it.

Mal got what he was looking for out of his pocket: a syringe. His eyes glittering with new-found glee, like it was some kind of magical treasure. 

He drove it into Avery's side.

" _STOP_!" Mal commanded.

Immediately, Avery felt unbound, relaxed, a wave of calm sweeping over him like a warm hug or a perfect yoga pose. He was himself again. Which meant his huge headache returned. He made that stereotypical confused groan people make when they're released from mind control.

"I'm okay," he said to no one. He plucked the syringe from his leg. The leg immediately weakened and he fell.

Rad squared off against Mal again, brandishing the confiscated shotgun: "Mal Kite, you are under arrest for attempted murder and...accessory to another attempted murder...and basically you just suck.  Don't move, and keep your hands where I can see them."

Mal looked at Rad, then looked at Avery. Then at Rad again.

He booked it the fuck out of there.

Rad pointed the gun ineffectually at Mal's fleeing back.

"Hey, wait! You...you get back here...!"

Rad hung his head. "My childhood kite left the same way."

Avery politely allowed a couple of seconds to honor the lost kite and the bad guy getting away before asking, "What the fuck just happened?"

He examined the empty syringe like it had the answer written on it, but it just said, "Sterilize before use."  

Rad warily lowered the shotgun.

"You...you okay?" He extended his hand out to Avery, but he was standing too far away for the hand to be meant to help Avery up. 

They awkwardly stayed like that for a second, several feet apart and Rad keeping his hand out. It made Rad look like he was testing the waters with an unfriendly neighborhood dog, or something. Avery had half a mind to go sniff Rad's hand. Instead, he stood up on his own.

"I'm fine." Pain coursed down his skull like a fresh surgery. "Well, I think I'll be fine, I mean."

"That's good," the officer took a couple steps closer. "Because _you're_ under arrest. Again." 

He pulled out his handcuffs, swinging them around in a circle. He made no attempt to hide a cheeky, arrant little smirk.

Not sure what he was supposed to do, Avery provisionally put his hands together in front of him, palms up.

He shook his head. "I'm really, really sorry I almost killed you, Officer, but it _was_ some kind of mind control! Like, that Mal guy kept singing and I tried to stop myself, but it was like I was watching myself from outside my body! And then there was the weird thing with the orange! His orange suit made me even crazier! That might be a _clue_ to something!" Avery was gesturing enthusiastically while still keeping his wrists together like a good law-abiding citizen. "Maybe there's some kind of conspiracy...involving orange, and pop songs. But I'm just a pawn in someone else's–Wait! Orange. Soda.  _Pop_. Music...Nope, I got nothing."

Rad just stood there with a deadpan, unimpressed look on his face, his large collar flapping entrancingly in the wind, the blue lights shining magnificently off his hair.

With an upward flick of the chin, he said, "On the ground."

"But I was just there!" Avery pouted.

"On the ground," Rad repeated in a harsh but even tone.

Before Avery had the chance, Rad used his leg to shove Avery's knees forward until they buckled, then grabbed Avery's arms to lessen the impact of the fall. He cuffed Avery roughly. By now, the cold nickel hinge snapping securely was an all-too-familiar sensation on his lithe little wrists.

But he wasn't thinking about that, as he lay on his stomach and Rad straddled him from behind, his groin snugly against the small of Avery's back. Avery felt sweat prick at him immediately, hotly, in every place that could possibly sweat. His throat tightened nervously — fitting that the esophageal muscle was also called a sphincter.

Suddenly, Rad uncuffed him.

Avery felt hot goosebumps crawl up his arms, into his chest. The hairs at the nape of his neck stood on end. A wanting, aching prickle had long already become a bulge in his crotch.

Rad sighed, which made him settle deeper into Avery. 

"Fine, I know you're not dangerous. I'm just kind of mad you tried to kill me, and all."

"Me too!" Avery spluttered. "I was trying to fight it, I swear. But I, um, couldn't fight it." He tried to clear his throat but ended up just making a weird choked squealing noise.

"Fight...Hmm. You know...I'm going to help you out," Rad said.

Avery's brain was a puddle of exclamation points and anticipation.

 

-

 

"Help me out..." Avery repeated.

Rad flipped Avery onto his front, still pinning him down. His tank and pants were so thin that with the cold wind (that barely reached his senses now), he felt totally naked.

Rad looked at him searchingly for a second, but other than that he was just so...easygoing about this. So casual. Like being on top of some dude behind an abandoned warehouse out in the Crescent Heights district in the middle of the night was totally normal, a good time to be chatty and relaxed.

"Let's face the facts," Rad began. "Vex Mullery's already talking about a spinoff series of _The Avery Mystery_ with you in jail."

He shifted easily in his body language, raising and lowering his hands from pinning Avery down as he talked. Avery was confused as hell, but he sure wasn't about to say anything. Instead, he stared shamelessly at Rad's exposed, hairy chest, his button-down shirt fabric making little shifting noises as he moved and the shirt tightened over his chest. Avery thought about undoing the buttons, one by one, sliding down–

"–Judge Jaxxon's presiding over your case. And there's video evidence of you killing someone. So even though you're innocent...it doesn't look good."

Avery just shrugged. To the extent that he could, with Rad's burly arms pressing his shoulders down.

"No! This is serious! Very! Serious!" Rad said, shaking Avery on "very" and "serious" for emphasis. "You're going to _literally_ get _murdered_ in prison."

" _Literally_ murdered? Like, murdered."

"No! I mean...you _know_ what I mean. Your asshole will be like the desert."

_Desert? What's that supposed to mean?_

"Huge, cracked, and full of thirsty men and their poisonous snakes, going in dry."

Avery scoffed, but in reality he was weirdly turned on by Rad's purring vocal fry on the word "dry." 

"Well, I guess that's what my stupid powers are for," Avery said.

Rad locked a steely gaze on him. Avery drew in a shaky breath.

"Don't you remember singing 'Sew Good' at the bar tonight?"

"Wait...you were there?"

"No, but the cameras were. Filming more  _Avery Mystery."_

He didn't remember. Leave it to him to be blackout drunk after five drinks.

Avery frowned and shook his head.

"Well, nothing happened when you sang the song. Obviously you can't brainwash yourself. That's, like, the first rule of brainwashing."

Avery sighed. He was used to not having any control over anything, so why should this be different?

"So I'm going to teach you how to fight in prison. Pretend I'm going to rape you, and fight me off."

Holy fuck.

Rad stared blankly and resolutely at him,  like he was just doing his civic duty as a pubic servant. Er, public.

Avery was absolutely itching to tear his own pants off to make it easier, but instead he blurted out something more reasonable.

"I'm not going to fight a cop!"

"Yeah, that'd really stain your perfect criminal record."

"..."

"Come on! Just do _something_!" Rad's eyes burned into him, frustrated and expectant. His brows knitted together into a handsome scowl, a pouty dimple on his perfect chin.

Before he realized what he was doing, Avery surged up and kissed him. The pleasure of warmth and wetness baked in his nerves as an immediate release. He felt paralyzed, noodle arms, but at the same time he was like a starving beast, shoving his tongue down Rad's throat. He could have sworn Rad responded as he teased Rad's mouth open, sucking just the tiniest bit on Avery's lower lip. 

Then Rad pulled away so fast that Avery's lip made a little "plop" noise against his teeth.

Avery let himself fall back down onto the pavement again, as if to prematurely self-K.O.

Rad sat back on his haunches, looking utterly shocked.

"Uh...um..."

"I–I'm sorry..." Avery squeezed his eyes tight. He still felt a deep, unshakable tingle in his ribs.

Rad stood up and dusted himself off, looking preoccupied with a small speckle of mud on his suit.

"I see how you might have gotten, er, _mixed signals_ , but this isn't...this isn't a _gay_ thing."

Avery sat up, an ironical grin suddenly on his face. "So staging a simulated sex scene with me is a _straight_ thi–"

 _"DO YOU WANT MY HELP OR NOT_?!"

"Um..." Avery gulped, and his spit made a little metallic crackling noise as he swallowed it.

The two men stood in a biting silence. Finally, Avery nodded.

"Okay, I'm sorry."

Rad took a couple steps away from him and started pacing back and forth, hands behind his back, except to occasionally point at what Avery could only guess was supposed to be an imaginary chalkboard.

"So. The R.A.D. system stands for Rape Aggression Defense. Since you don't have time to learn about fighting styles...and other things I myself am very well versed in...I'll just go over the basics." He took a few steps closer. "Stand up."

Rad whirled around, swept one of Avery's feet out from under him again, grabbed him by the wrist, and pulled, so that they were both sent flying sideways to the ground. Avery legitimately tried to struggle out of the wrist-hold, panicking a little as Rad's grip became stronger and Avery's resistance turned into a smarting red Indian burn. But he was still cautious and unsure of how viciously he was supposed to fight back, so instead of kicking or punching, he just tried to use his feet to push Rad's chest away.

"You're ruining my jacket," Rad grumbled.

"No I'm not, my shoes have hydrophobic soles that repel dirt–"

Rad spun around on his ass to face Avery sideways, swung his legs over Avery's chest, and pulled Avery's arm through, between his legs. Avery could feel his shoulder against Rad's crotch, and a burst of happy delirium so strong he almost felt sick zapped its way through him.

"Okay, now what are you going to do?" Rad asked, breaking his trance.

Avery nodded, ready to impress Rad with his wiry skills of escape and evasion, and tried to jerk his arm, which was by now hot and sticky despite the cold, out from between Rad's pant legs. A wave of prickling, nauseating pain jabbed him in the elbow, but as he could feel Rad's thigh muscles tense, trapping his arm, he couldn't help but become erect.

He tried to yank his arm once again, this time rotating it the other way. Rad leaned backwards, using his own body as a counterbalance so that Avery's elbow was twisted further between Rad's legs, his thigh muscles contracting smoothly like a swallowing snake. It was a trap of burning sensuality that he didn't want to break free from, but since he totally saw where Rad was coming from with the whole prison-will-be-terrible thing, he kept trying. Rad clamped down on his arm even further as he strained, the two men's muscles chafing hard against each other.

" _OW GOD MY ARM IS BREAKING_!" 

Avery stopped resisting, but the pain still swelled incredibly.

"This is what's called a submission hold," Rad said calmly.

By now, Avery was in way too much pain to be turned on by the implication. He could be into it, but not _this_ much. (Again, why prison was a huge no-no.)

"Try either wriggling your arm down or using a leg to kick me in the solar plexus."

"...How am I supposed to damage your  _car_  when I'm pinned down here like this?"

"..."

"..."

Rad sighed. "Never mind."

Rad finally leaned all the way back, pulling Avery's arm as taut as the resistance bands he used in yoga.

"Come on, you can figure your way out of this. Just concentrate." Rad was just as calm as before in the face of Avery's yelps and protests. Needless to say, this calmness was quite unlike the cop's usual neurotic self.

Wait. 

_Yoga_.

Without really thinking about it, and grimacing though the burn, Avery raised his body upwards, supporting himself with his free arm to arch his back into a bridge. Rad's legs on Avery's chest were lifted with it, but Rad held strong, pumping iron on Avery's poor, twisting arm.

Avery exhaled, trying to concentrate. He closed his eyes and flung one leg backwards over his head, the other following suit in a nimble, graceful kick-over. He landed squarely on his feet. He raised his brows mischievously at Rad, and extended his not-throbbing-in-pain arm to help the cop up.

"Wow, that was actually really cool! I feel _way_ better about prison now!" Avery beamed.

Rad nodded and coughed, with a half-hearted smile.

"You don't have to be mad," Avery said, shaking out his mop of red hair merrily. "I mean, I'm just an acrobat, you know? But I never thought of using that as an advantage before! Sure, a lot of guys in jail are _strong_ , but if you're _quick_ , and _limber_ "—he interrupted himself with a quick laugh at the sort of innuendo— _"_ Anyway, thank you, for showing me I could do it! Phew! That was _exhilarating_."

Rad flinched as Avery picked up the old shotgun of Mal's from off the pavement, but Avery just put the sling over his shoulder and strode around, like he was in the Wild West.

Rad smiled politely and shook his head, rather out of character.

"Something wrong?"

"Nothing! You did, uh, great!" Rad struck a fighting pose. "You passed the test, _young grasshoppah_."

"Thank you, sensei," Avery bowed solemnly.

Rad laughed uneasily, shifty eyes.

"What's wrong?" Avery the Lone Ranger approached.

Then, it dawned on him.

"Wait...did you let me win?"

"Um...well, uh..." Rad stammered, then brightened as he continued, "Hey, you know, it's like three-thirty in the morning, I gotta get home and see if  _Jolly Closet_ reruns are still on CKTV, and if they are I need to send more angry letters, so. Pretty important. The squad car's behind the building, I'll give you a police escort home..."

Avery's blood ran cold.

"Did you let me win, or not?" he repeated.

Rad sighed. He paused a minute before confessing, his eyes full of pity: "If I didn't let go, you'd have a broken wrist."

Avery just stood staring off into space. He chuckled sadly to himself, totally lost. A weird mix of shame, stress, and aggravation gave his heart an uncomfortable squeeze.

"I dunno what I got so excited for, anyway. Fighting with yoga stretches?"

"Probably...not the best technique." Rad muttered with a nod.

Avery looked up to the twinkly sky. "Looks like I'm going to be totally screwed in prison–"

Rad opened his mouth.

"–pun _not_ intended." Avery clarified.

Rad closed his mouth. 

Avery started on his way home, leaving Rad standing there confused: "Look, you don't need to give me a lift. Not trying to sound like a victim or an asshole, but I don't really care what happens to me." Avery strained to enunciate the words as his voice turned to a teary blubber. "Thanks for trying to help. Maybe you did. I've sobered up to the reality of prison...at least...I guess..."

He tried to hide the fact that he was crying as the wind cut like knives into his face.

Rad caught up to him and cut him off. 

"It's my duty as an officer to get you home safe."

Avery tried to turn away and hide his face, but was loudly wailing at this point, something about "I don't want to go to jail," but mostly he just sounded like a yowling cat.

"Um..." The officer awkwardly patted Avery on the back as he sobbed uncontrollably. Rad guided him to the police car. The three synth beats from the clock struck again, making the car shudder. Rad did a dorky little "disco point" dance with it. He had Mal's shotgun and, holding it by the strap with a grossed-out expression like it was a used tissue, tossed it into the trunk along with the mysterious empty syringe. Avery laughed despite himself, wiping his eyes.

Rad opened his door, but then instead of getting in, flung his arm over the top of the door, leaning on it.

"Hey, do you...want to go for ice cream?"

"...Aren't you on duty? And aren't we supposed to go back to the station and report all this, or whatever?"

"..."

"..."

"Yeah, let's go for ice cream," Rad repeated, ignoring him. "Also"—he eyed Avery sternly, eyes narrowing in the rear-view mirror—"this is _not_ a date."

Avery smirked to himself as he slid into the back seat of the squad car. He bit his nails to hide the smile.

_And, as they drove away, a watchful spy was smiling to himself, too..._


	6. Overexposed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rad and Avery are blackmailed as an annoying subplot...Or, is it part of something bigger? Dazzle is _really_ good at puns, and even better at being a douche. No progress is made on the case.

_A lot of people have been overexposed. It’s true. Where people are fed up. I pray that that never happens with me. I just don’t like being on a lot of different things or being everywhere because I get kind of embarrassed. But I think secretly and privately there is...I mean really deep within there is a destiny for me and just for me to stay on that track and follow it. I really believe and feel I am here for a reason and that’s my job, you know, to perform for the people...If they want to put me up on that pedestal I feel even better._ \- Michael Jackson

 

 

 

 

\--------------

" _OH MY GOD! PULL OVER!_ "

"What?" Rad snapped at Avery, before he saw the figure outside the window, banging on his door, riding on a hoverboard.

Both Rad and Avery screamed their heads off before the police car skidded up a sidewalk ramp and slammed into a pole.

\--------------

 _July 1984_

\--------------

Avery was like a kid in a candy store.

He was all but giddy as he grasped Jazz's shoulder with both hands, making her look out the giant windows of Trance Studios, the tallest building in Moonbeam City.

"Look, Jazzie! See Mecca Tower from here? It's way down there!"

He pointed to the top of the second tallest building, which, was, indeed, dwarfed by this monster skyscraper. They were so high up here in the glorious Trance Studios, he could barely even see the cars traveling along hair-thin rivulets of roads.

He tried again: "Trance Studios! Aren't you _excited_?"

She shrugged him off. "Avery."

"...What?" he pouted.

"Please, get ahold of yourself." She strode ahead of him, coldly, looking smart in a strapless blue charmeuse satin jumpsuit, her long blonde hair tossing from side to side. Avery turned white, felt a nauseating prickle like his skin was being stuck with barbed wire. 

He wanted to ask her if she (still) hated him. He wanted to ask so badly. But he didn't.

And no time to think about that, anyway, as they walked into a large, blindingly white room, filled with white Ball Chairs. All the chairs swiveled around, big balls swinging, at once, to reveal record producers and executives. And the CEO: Roy Geebiv. 

All of them were wearing all black, peppered with gold watches and chains here and there. Roy swung his own chain watch while leaning back in the Ball Chair luxuriantly, his black hair and mustache gelled perfectly into a gentlemanly, controlled style. Like Clark Gable and the rest of the greats.

Avery felt like he had really _made it_. But he was also more nervous than he'd ever been in his whole life. It was like he was on trial.

"Mister Avery." Roy smiled politely, but, sitting at the head of the table at the far end, made no move to shake Avery's hand. "Please, have a seat."

Avery nodded, but all the seats around the table were clearly filled by the faceless execs. 

"Umm...Where do I–"

Before Avery could finish the question, another Ball Chair suddenly popped up, spring-loaded, from under the floor right where he was standing, and scooped him up. He yelped slightly as it swept his feet out from underneath him.

"Wow, that is really cool! Like, this is the most awesome chair I've ever sat in! Even the ones made of _satin_!" He rubbed awkwardly at his arms, recollecting himself, and flashed everyone a winning smile. They just blinked at him, confused.

"Please excuse him, he's still a little...starry-eyed," Jazz said, shooting him a _look_.

Roy laughed, charming and composed. "That is quite alright, Miss Jasmine," he said, and finally stood up from the table. His Ball Chair was engulfed into the floor.

"Mister Sparks Avery...we all like what you have done with this _Rainbow Songs_ album of yours. So, I want to hear your plans for the next album. Each album must be...different, you know. Cannot do the same thing twice." He walked over to the floor-to-ceiling windows and put his hands behind his back as he studied his domain.

"So, go. Tell me your plans." Roy said.

"Um..." Avery cleared his throat, fidgeting in the chair nervously, his ass almost touching the ground in the weird little dome.

"Go, _go_!" Roy proved he was an angry Italian with a sharp "mano a borsa" hand motion. 

 

Avery shook in his silver hologram lace-up ankle boots, but took a deep breath, and suddenly it all came to him: "Well, Mr. Geebiv — I want to go a little _darker_ with this next album. I have a vision for it, you know? The dancy beats will still be there, but I want the bass and guitar to sound sadder, grittier,  _harsher_ , heavier, more _ironic_. More of a shoegaze echo that settles deep in the empty cavities of your soul, yeah? A really _existential_ sound." 

In a fit of pique, he leapt up out of his chair, which scraped him on the ass on its way back into the floor.

"Ouch!...I want this to be glam rock, post-punk, dark-wave, super _edgy_! But still really...present. Alive. Frenzied. Agitated! Current! But _timeless_. This will be Bowie! This will be Joy Division! The Cure!...To all that ails you."

With that, Avery smirked, satisfied with himself, and crossed his arms as he fell back down in his chair. Oh, wait, the chair wasn't there. He fell down right onto the pointy toe of Jazz's heels. His lumbar region screamed out in pain.

"God _damn_ it, Avery!" Jazz yanked her foot out from under his ass. "You ruined my Cristiano Luxurianos!"

"Sorry, Jazz," Avery peeled himself from off the carpet.

"You know what? No! I am not accepting your apology."

"Well, then..." Avery looked down at the ground and made sure he was far away from where he might get cocked by the Ball again. "How does that album idea sound, Mr. Geebiv?"

Roy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "It sounds rather... _whiny_ , yes? All this anarchism, these Smiths, I think it has been overdone. The 'grungy grunge' sort of music. We can do better."

Avery nodded, already feeling a bit heartbroken and greenish in the face. "Right. Yes. Of course...But, with all due respect, sir, being like Joy Division or New Order has always been my dream, and I think calling their music 'whiny' is a bit reductive–"

" _Cigarette girl_!" Roy Geebiv suddenly screamed at the top of his lungs. For a second, Avery thought Roy was insulting him in a really weird, obscure way...before a girl rushed into the room. She placed a cigarette in Roy's mouth, and lit it for him; she dashed out of the room again, timid as a mouse.

Roy took a puff of the cigarette, hands shaking a little. He was still looking out the window, taking in Moonbeam City, or what could be seen of it from this high up. The wealthy Rivieran gentleman did not deign to look at any of them.

"Avery, you listen to me, or you do not get the job. We are going to break new ground with your music, but we are going to do it the right way. _My_ way. Yes?"

Avery was stunned into silence.

"One-word answer, give it to me."

"Yes," Jazz stepped up, determination in her baby blues, as she gave Avery another _look_.

"...Miss Jasmine, I will need Avery's own answer."

Avery was suddenly furious. He turned on Jazz. "You're my agent, not my _handler_!"

"We can talk about this later, idiot!" Jazz growled through her teeth. "Don't waste Mr. Geebiv's time!"

Roy waved away her concern. "Actually, it seems the two of you have something to work out. And it would be better to duke it out now than later, as well as more entertaining for me. _Popcorn girl_!"

The same girl who carried in the cigarettes before now came bouncing in with a steaming, buttery bucket of popcorn.

Jazz nodded professionally at Roy as he tucked into his popcorn.

Then, she turned her wrath to Avery. 

"I didn't go this far just to have you throw it all away!" she yelled, poking him in the chest for emphasis.

"I'm not," Avery sighed, and, hesitating, divided his attention between Jazz and Roy as he spoke. "I've just always wanted to make music that's a little sad. But in a good way. Makes people question themselves. There's a French phrase that captures the feeling well: _l'appel du vive_ , which means, the appeal of the void–"

" _L'appel du vive_? What the _fuck_?" said Jazz.

Roy Geebiv nodded along with her, like, what the fuck, indeed?

"You are so pretentious! Are you fucking serious, Avery? You are so...so..."

She faltered under Avery's nervous expression. He knew what she wanted to say.

Luckily, she didn't.

"God. I think you smashed my toes in with your bony ass," she said instead.

"I think you smashed my ass in with your bony toes!" Avery fired back.

" _Bony_ toes?" She wheeled around and grabbed a white vase that was sitting on a small white pedestal table. Once she picked the vase up, the table sunk back down into to the ground, like with the Ball Chairs.

"Okay," he put his hands up, yielding, "But seriously, why do you need such sharp, pointy shoes?"

"I don't know, why do _you_ need shoes that are bright-ass rainbow eyesores?"

She threw the vase, which missed Avery and landed with a soft thud on the carpet. She gave Roy Geebiv a look like she was asking for permission. He gave her a thumbs-up. 

She smiled, kicked off her shoes, and threw them at Avery. He dodged the first easily but the second scraped him on the cheekbone. 

Okay, now he was _mad_. Electric fury jolted through him like a burst of red lightning.

He stormed up to Jazz. "You're right, I should wear Winklepicker shoes and shove 'em up _your_ ass, and see how you like it!" 

With projectiles flying at his head he wasn't in a forgiving mood.

Jazz picked up the vase again and he cringed. But she was eerily calm, wearing a Stepford smile. She replaced the vase on the floor where the table had been, and the table lifted up again. 

She approached him, with intense but measured hatred in the lines of her brow. She bent close to his ear, her neck smooth and tawny and perfumed with a sweet, heady, designer scent.

"Oh, who are you kidding, you don't want to shove your Winklepicker up _my_ ass, do you, Avery?"

Avery bit his lower lip reflexively, and said nothing.

She whispered even more softly, so that Roy and the others couldn't hear, and took his hand as she said: "You're taking this deal, or I tell everyone the truth about you."

Then, she stepped back, releasing his hand with an innocent, sporting swing of her arm. She winked and walked over to the door.

"He'll do it, if he knows what's good for him."

"...This is way better than _Days of Our Lives,_ " Roy said in between mouthfuls of popcorn.

 

 

\--------------

_Back to the Present (November 1986)_

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The hoverboarding figure stayed motionless in midair, next to the police car. After a few tense moments of mutual squinting at each other, Rad threw the car into reverse. The fender groaned in protest as the metal un-crunched. Rad rolled down his window tentatively, hand near his taser.

"Hey, shady black criminal figure! Reveal yourself!"

The figure removed their hood. It was Jet Grooms, with his characteristic and rather dashing hi-top fade. He waved at them halfheartedly.

Rad backpedaled immediately: "Wait, NO! I didn't mean it like _that_! I meant, but I can't see you, because you're dark! I mean, it's dark! Outside!"

Jet said nothing. The look on his face changed from apathetic, to apathetic contempt.

"Bu-ut," Rad lilted amicably, "It is suspicious of you to be recklessly hovering in the middle of the night. Not that you would be any _more_ suspicious than, um, anyone else, but it would also be discriminatory of me to _assume_ you aren't—"

" _Okay_ , okay!" Jet stopped Rad from digging his way to China. "As Jah Rastafari is my witness, I officially denominate you as a Not Racist Cop. Happy?"

Rad nodded, completely oblivious to the sarcasm.

Jet whipped out some Polaroids from the pocket of his jacket (which was denim once again) and handed them to Rad. 

Rad turned on the police car's dome lights, which he had, of course, changed to purple. Avery leaned over his shoulder to get a closer look. (And to get closer to Rad, duh.) The Polaroids made cute little slippery noises as Rad flipped through them. 

"So, what do you see?" Jet asked.

" _Blackmail_." Avery cursed under his breath.

"No, look at the photos, not at me!" Jet laughed. Awkward pause. "...Sorry, just trying to get to the uncomfortable race joke before Officer Cunningham." 

The photos were of Rad and Avery wrestling and, more damning, their kiss. Well, more damning for Rad. Avery gave no fucks, except he was trying to see whether Rad had his eyes open during the kiss or not. Before Avery could tell for sure, Rad crumpled up the photos and threw them out the window, wildly backing the car over them a few times.

"Hah! Ah! Ah!" He laughed slash grunted each time he backed up, never breaking eye contact with Jet. Jet just yawned.

Avery started to feel a bit sick, what with all this backing up and thrusting forward, and the screeching tires, and the purple lights so bright they would make a Prince concert look drab, and also his maybe-concussion from that Mal guy.

The photos had been carried off by the wind by now. Rad was just backing again and again over nothing.

" _Screw_ your scandal, scuzzball!" he finally yelled in a pinched, strained voice.

Then, his face softened as he considered: "Also, have a good night, and please be on your way home. The MBPD has emergency curfew laws in place. With the exception of those carrying out the duties of a lawful employment activity, or going directly to or returning directly from said activity. Or, if you are traveling to or from a medical appointment, religious activity–"

Jet interrupted him by pressing his Polaroid camera's shutter button. A floppy disk popped out of the slot.

"You know I have extra copies of those photos, right? I used the built-in RF modulator on this camera to put them on this diskette. It's the latest technology."

Avery and Rad looked appropriately blown away by the idea that photos could be stored in seconds on a digital storage medium. 

"And I uplinked a fax transmission to all the office computers at  _Moonbeam City Weekly_."

"..."

"..."

"Uh, what?" Avery asked.

"That means"—Jet leaned comfortably against the car, denim arms swishing as he crossed them—"you give me your beautiful holographic-flaked stallion of a DeLorean. Or else everybody finds out about this little...liaison."

Avery's face fell, just for a moment.

"I don't have my DeLorean anymore, unfortunately," Avery said.

But then, quick as a wink, he smiled bright and jumped out of the car, absolutely gushing: "So, then, do you need help coming up with a title for your article? How about...'Getting Frisked?' 'Boys in Blue Rendezvous?' Ooh, 'Court Date'? 'Dirty Cop'?...Maybe something to do with handcuffs?"

He bounced up and down the empty street with excitement. Jet and Rad stood there, both equally unmoved, trying and failing to follow the quick blur of motion.

"Yuk it up, Avery!" Rad yelled after him.

Rad got out of the cop car, giving Jet a threatening look. His neon-tube belt (that spelled out his name) glistened a bit in the dark.

Jet took a step back casually.

"I guess he really doesn't care"—Jet motioned to Avery with an upward jerk of the chin—"about how this will affect you." He crossed his arms cheekily, gauging Rad's reaction.

"You'll lose your job. You might even have to skip town. And if I feel like it, the article might even  _imply_  that you and Avery have AIDS. No woman...or man...or whoever will want to touch you with a ten-foot pole."

"..."

"I mean, because of the common and harmful misconception — given this day in this year of 1986 — about how the AIDS virus can be spread by airborne transmission."

It was clear Rad wasn't really paying attention, but his eyes got super wide as he added, "And, Dazzle would make fun of me, like, _forever_."

Jet looked at Rad curiously.

"...Uh, sure...That too.  _Unless_ ," Jet drew it out, waiting for Rad's reaction, "Avery didn't let me finish the thing about the car. The thing is, your _parents_ have it." Jet sucked in a breath of air and whistled out. "I've heard rumors about you being _the_ Gregory Manning. Think you could get that car for me?"

There was a moment of silence, the air all around immediately sucked into a quiet vacuum. Rad's green eyes darkened.

He screwed up his face tight enough to prevent crying. He nailed Jet against the police car, and Jet just laughed confusedly.

"That's it. You're under arrest," Rad said shakily. His handcuffs had gotten a lot of play tonight.

Jet kept up his low chuckle, which was admittedly a nice change of pace from Mal's cackling insanity. "Great, and I'll tell Officer Novak the reason why you brought me down, and plus, the photos are already on our computers! Damage is done. If you arrest me, the photos get leaked." 

He puffed out his cheeks and made a cocky "explosion" sound as Rad, in a daze of dismay, let him go.

Avery, lit in gold by streetlights (ever the starlet) as he stood dancing in the middle of the road, snapped out of fantasyland. He couldn't hear the exchange between Rad and Jet, but he just realized that the photos getting out was a big issue. Something broke inside him, which was wont to happen recently, so many times it was more like splitting hairs than actual breakage. He stormed over to Jet. 

 

"Jet! You are...just! Such! A fucking, a flipping...sellout!" Avery waved his arms exasperatedly, searching for a mean word in his sweet-as-cherry-pie vocabulary. "While I was skipping around in the middle of the street, it occurred to me that if this article got out, Rad would totally _get made fun of by the other cops_!"

Jet inhaled so hard his nostrils hissed. He spun around on his heels to face Avery.

"And you're not worried about what prison will be like for you after fucking around with a cop? Or that now if you're innocent, it'll look like you got off by bribing the police?"

"I do _get off_ by bribing the police, thank you." Avery smirked exuberantly.

Jet looked uncomfortable, but not in response to that comment as much as he just looked generally frustrated, shoving his hands down in his pockets to stifle his nervous energy.

"God," he finally sputtered, "it's almost no fun to blackmail you two.

"Anyway, get that car to me at the _Moonbeam City Weekly_ office in one week, or I print the article. Okay?"

Avery slammed himself against the frame of the car in a huff, sidling up next to Rad, until Rad elbowed him in the ribs.

" _Moonbeam City Weekly_? _Avery Mystery_?" Avery paced back and forth on his shiny heels. "This is all such bullshit! Why can't you guys just _leave me the fuck alone_?"

The reporter was just about to leave, when Avery leaped forward, practically vibrating with raw anger, and shook him wildly by the jacket collar.

Jet was still not really phased. He cleared his throat and began a monologue a full minute in length, without any interruption during its delivery, and which seemed like it might have been prepared beforehand:

"The paparazzi's job is far more important than you might think, Avery. We swaddle the collective public in a security blanket that numbs the pain of their own meaningless existence, by pacifying them with such deeply superficial trash that they know the world  _must_ be okay, must be  _safe_ , if such mindless relief is still there to greet them on every billboard, at every supermarket register.

"As long as the headline, 'Sparks Avery is wearing an iridescent aqua poet shirt today, in the nonexistent privacy of his own home!', is more important than the fact that the shirt's being made by  _orphaned child laborers_  in a Shenzhen sweatshop, we can all willfully ignore the evils that happen in this world, without having to feel bad about them. Without having to feel bad about anything ever again. We are the smoke and mirrors...the illusion that everything is just... _perfect_.

"...Now if you'll 'scuse me, I have to go write an article about how y'all have AIDS cooties." 

Jet released himself from Avery's grasp, and started walking back to his hoverboard.

Meanwhile, Rad reached into his inside pocket, making kind of a show of it; the shadows of the streetlights turned into window blind shadows. (Avery had just learned not to question that one.) He fished around in the pocket for at least thirty seconds, muttering about the struggle under his breath, and finally pulled out a wooden spoon. He held it up and began to pace back and forth in front of Jet, slapping the wooden spoon in the palm of his hand like a disciplining schoolmarm.

"You have two choices. Either we can forget all about this little mishap, or you face the wrath of Spoony 2.0. A spoon that's used for good, not evil!"

The spoon had an angry Jack-o'-lantern face drawn on it in Sharpie.

"Are you _seriously_ going to attack me with a spoon–"

Rad pressed a button on the spoon, and a visible arc of electric current crackled to life at the bottom of the handle.

_Woah_.

Jet stepped back, tripping on his hoverboard and landing on his ass.

"Go, Hovey!" Jet squeaked out in a panic, grabbing the big blue surfer board, and holding on as it lifted up and carried him away like it was a giant bird.

Avery and Rad chased after him, grabbing at his heels as he flew through the air, but he held fast.

"You have _one week_ ," Jet repeated unsteadily as his arms buckled a bit. His bum was barely about to clear the quickly approaching Michael McDonald Monument.

"Look out behind you!" Rad called helpfully.

Jet swung his legs high and his board arced to the side, letting him vault easily over Michael's head.

 

-

 

Avery lightly slapped Rad's shoulder with a limp backhand — just an excuse to touch him, really — "Why'd you help him?" He sighed. "Another bad guy flying away like a kite."

Rad looked at Avery strangely, confident in the justice of what he had done. "Um, hello, he was like 10 yards off the ground. I mean, 30 feet...I get tired when I'm Canadian. I mean, I get Canadian when I'm tired. Maybe we should just go–"

Rad stopped short, catching something out of the corner of his eye.

"What? What is it?" Avery figured it was something related to the case, but then he saw a big Googie-style sign with a blinking red arrow: Beaver's Creamery.

"Oh, yeah, the ice cream!...Just a sec. You go on in," Avery said.

Rad did so, looking mildly confused, and Avery dashed back to the police car, picked up the crumpled photos that had been ground into the asphalt, stashed them in the felted fabric of his pockets. He spent a few seconds feeling like a hopeless creep.

A little brass bell over the door tinkled ever so softly as Avery entered. Rad and the server glanced up at him. He hoped nobody had seen him do that. The place was empty and deserted otherwise, though, and in that sense, rather...intimate.

Rad turned back to the server. "And, could you make it one half pineapple and one half honeydew, but, like, two visibly separate halves? That would be awesome."

The server rolled her eyes and began throwing various ingredients together before pouring in a pitcher of what looked to be liquid nitrogen, filling up the whole room with a cloud of cool, roiling smoke. Avery coughed. But, as promised, the end result was a glass split down the middle with the two flavors, and a couple pineapple wedges on the rim. Rad nodded approvingly.

"And for you, sir?"

Avery frowned. "Oh, uh, I'm not getting anything."

"What? Why not?" asked Rad. He snatched his glass off the table and, in between bites: "This is, like, a real gastronomic experience. You're missing out."

"Well I don't have any money, so..." Avery trailed off and stuck his hands in his pockets noncommittally, trying not to make it look like he was asking for Rad to pay for him. 

And failing, because now it definitely looked like he was asking for Rad to pay for him.

"Oh no. Oh. _No_ ," Rad said and swirled the contents of his glass, out of habit or nerves, and the metal spoon flew out and clattered on the ground. "If I pay for you, it's a date. And this is not a date, remember?"

Avery nodded and tried to look totally cool and unconcerned as he flopped back into one of those cutesy ice cream parlor chairs, the kind with a heart-shaped back.

It definitely didn't look like he was pouting. No way. The server quietly brought Avery a vaguely piña-colada-flavored something, and smiled at him.

Rad sat down and seemed a bit guilty, gifting Avery a little half-smile from across the table. 

"Nice place, isn't it? I love the fifties," Avery said.

Rad leaned back casually against the uncomfortable wrought iron heart-chair.

"Me too."

"Yeah, that doesn't surprise me," Avery gestured at him, like, _just look at you_.

Rad lifted a thick inky eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"

He continued to swirl the pineapple and honeydew sides of his ice cream together, the action forming a slight curl of white smoke from the residual liquid nitrogen.

"Oh!" Avery gulped and jolted upright. "I didn't mean it in a bad way. Not at all. I love it! But come on, tell me you're not purposely channeling Elvis in his '68 Comeback Special with that outfit."

Rad's mouth twitched contemptuously and he let go of his spoon. "1968? You mean, after Elvis got fat?"

"No!" Avery was sweating bullets. He could use a bucketful of liquid nitrogen right about now. "Elvis didn't gain weight until the 70s. Even then, it was a media exaggeration. Not that it matters."

"Oh." Rad's expression lifted immediately. Regarding Avery from behind his glass, he said, "Well, then, what about you, _Ziggy Stardust_? Could _you_ be any more obvious?"

Avery grinned splendidly at the comparison. "You think I'm like Bowie?" He grinned down at his hands in his lap, looking at the intricate weave on his Kente cloth pants, feeling like a student of the universe or something. A very full feeling. A feeling of being accepted, understood. Admired. Something he had not felt in a very long time.

Rad snickered. "Well, a cheap imitation."

"You know, I can't even be mad at you for that one," Avery said, putting his head in his hands, looking at his reflection in the shiny round tabletop.

Suddenly, Rad banged his fist on the table, battering the chintzy acrylic. Avery clung for dear life to his ice cream dish.

" _This_ is your problem, Avery!" Rad shoved an angry bite into his mouth and nodded appreciatively at the flavor fusion before continuing.

Avery shook his head in stunned confusion.

"You don't stand up for yourself! Yes, you were forced"—the fricative of that last word causing an angry layer of spit to form between Rad's sweet lips—"to do drugs, to let them brainwash you. And yeah, that was fucked up." He let up a little, jaw unclenching.

"But how did things get to that point? Where you stopped making good music in the first place? Why didn't you stand up for yourself? Fight back? Get mad?" 

Avery tried to remember what that felt like, getting mad. _Getting mad?_   The emotion seemed both vestigial and a little scary, like your removed appendix staring at you from a lab tray. A foreign concept.

"I think you're afraid to try, because you're afraid of knowing what it would feel like to _actually_ fail. But that just makes you a...spineless sad sack. I say that for your own good."

Avery continued staring at his reflection coolly, this time looking in his metal spoon. But honestly, he was just trying super hard to keep from crying _again_. 

"Is this a slideshow? Because somebody's projecting," Avery spat back.

Rad, for his part, stuck his tongue in his cheek, rolled his eyes, and laughed, like, "Here we go."

"Yes. You know what? Yes I am."

Avery lowered his spoon. "Oh." He winced at Rad, as a peace offering.

"To spare you the details, like the fact that the people I thought were my real parents actually kidnapped me when I was a baby and tried to make me marry my sister in a fake wedding–"

"Wait, _what_?" A bit of piña piddled out the side of Avery's mouth as his jaw dropped.

"–now I have the chance to meet my real parents."

"That sounds terrifying."

Avery thought momentarily of his own parents. They meant well enough, but they were total stuffy stiffs. They were way angrier about the fact that he didn't want to follow in his father's footsteps and become a biomechatronic roboticist, than they were about him being gay.

"Yeah," Rad replied. He kept stirring his ice cream until it looked more like slime. "I'm used to being rejected and hated and a total social pariah and all that. In fact, I learned to own it. Fact, I learned to get off on it"—Avery opened his mouth to speak, but Rad interrupted—"which is a conversation for a  _never_ time."

Rad spooned out the last of his ice cream and placed the empty glass in a pneumatic tube. It was launched away with completely unnecessary speed.

"There are just a million different ways I could fuck this up," Rad laid his head on his arms crossed on the table, moans stifled by his sleeve.

"No way," Avery chanced an indiscretion and, heart pounding, gave Rad's forearm a little squeeze.

Rad lifted his head, the tiniest bit of furry 5-o-clock-in-the-morning shadow starting to show on his chin. 

"...Well, the thing is, I also need to get your car back from them. For Jet."

Avery nodded, his gray eyes sparkling. He tucked into his ice cream again, humming. "If you like piña coladas, and getting caught in the — wait,  _WHAT_?"

"Jet told me the people you sold your car to, to make bail, were _my parents_. So all we have to do is go meet my parents, ask them for the car back, and get it to Jet!"

Avery's headache, from Mal slamming him against the wall, or maybe from brain freeze, came back in full force.

"Um...no offense, but don't we have more important things to worry about than Jet's gay tabloid?

"...Like, the fact that some dude nearly murdered both of us, and is trying to turn me into some kind of killing machine? Or the fact that your police department is defrauding the justice system by turning my case into a reality TV show?"

Rad frowned with a sort of tenderness.

"You're right! You're right."

The bell over the door tinkled again as a few other people milled in...Uh oh.

"But, if you could just _meet_ my parents..." Rad continued.

Avery tried to signal, with his spoon, for Rad to shut up. But it was too late.

"That sounds so romantic."

A familiar salmon-bedecked figure raced up behind Rad and hooked an arm around his neck.

Rad coughed and choked, eyes wide, not so much because of being snuck up on from behind, but upon realizing it was...

" _DAZZLE_? W-what are _you_ doing here?"

Dazzle scoffed so hard he practically hocked a loogie. "'What am I doing here?' More like, where have I _been_ , right? On this case, I mean. Like, seriously, _where have I been_?"

A moment of silence as the party wondered where he had, in fact, been.

"Well..." Dazzle released Rad and went to make the same sneaky move on Pizzaz, who'd come in with him and was at the counter deciding what flavor of artistically-presented ice cream to order. 

"The answer is, I've been spending a lot more time with this little gem." He slipped his arms around her waist, lowering them dangerously close to her ass before she whirled around, grabbed his arm, and flipped him right over her shoulder into the nearest table.

Dazzle quickly staggered up and adjusted his collar, chucking nervously. He rolled his eyes knowingly at Rad and Avery, like, _Women, right?_

He lowered his voice to a solemn whisper. "She's mad at me because I called her 'Piece-a-ass.' Like, 'Pizzaz, Piece 'a ass?'"

Avery eyed him disapprovingly. Rad just shrugged.

"I _know_ I shouldn't have, but it was just. Too. Clever. It was...just... _there_ on my tongue, and I was like, 'Hey, Piece-a-ass Miller!' and I swear, my life flashed before my eyes," he opened them wide and glanced behind him, as if still fearful of getting murdered any second, "but. You know. Puns before chivalry."

There was something attractive about the fast, staccato, and very very cocksure way Officer Novak spoke, that was true. 

But even so Avery already knew the guy was a grade-A dick.

Pizzaz tossed her hot-rollered hair and shot him a glare, colder than the clouds of liquid nitrogen that were smoldering around her pink-irised eyes. She turned back to the server.

"I'll have a Midori Melon Liqueur. And _he's_ paying."

Avery cleared his throat and tried to defuse the tension: "Hey, looks like we all got melon flavors. You have muskmelon, Officer Cunningham had honeydew, and I had coconut."

Rad wrinkled his nose. "Coconut isn't a melon," he said scornfully.

In a somewhat companionable manner, Dazzle slapped Avery on the back just as he was finishing the last of his ice cream. The cold bulbous spoon jabbed Avery in the throat and he gagged delicately.

"Yeeeup," Dazzle began. "Sounds about right. Everyone enjoying their _melons_ , except Avery, with the _'cock and nuts_.'" His face lit up with pure glee. "...Patron Saint of Puns, I owe you my thanks." He looked to the ceiling reverently.

The server handed Pizzaz her dessert and hesitated there at the table.

"Sir, I'm sorry, but if you keep, um, harassing the other customers you'll have to leave."

"It's okay! I'm a cop." He flashed his badge and smiled brightly, like a proud new recruit.

Not doing much to hide the look of disgust on her face, the server went out for a smoke break, leaving the group to what looked like it was going to be–

"Just shut the fuck up, Dazzle."

–a huge fight.

Dazzle barely held back a thrilled grin, holding it back for the sake of acting and dramatics, or something.

"Oh, I wasn't interrupting your date, was I?"

Rad stood up, looking tall, commanding, powerful. Avery involuntarily literally got on the edge of his seat, drawing in a quiet breath as the chair made a little scoot noise. Rad's nostrils flared and his shoulders and neck broadened sturdily—hard trapezius muscles visible even under his shoulder pads—as he tensed his whole body defensively.

"It's not a date."

"Oh really?" Dazzle smirked.

"Well," Rad relented for a moment, "it _is_ November 2nd. But it's  _not_ a date."

Avery stood up himself, uncertainly, as the men continued to intimi _date_ each other. On the one hand, it was kind of an electrifying fucking feeling. Cold goosebumps tickled up his forearms and back. On the other hand, his little-used rational side told him he had better step in.

"It's really not a date." Avery eased his way between them. It was at this moment he remembered that the penis drawings from the bar were still probably a bit visible on his face, which was probably more damning that anything, but...

"So I woke up in this bar a couple of hours ago. You probably saw it on _The Avery Mystery._ Which, again, is a show whose rules are illegally being substituted for the criminal justice system, so that the illegal show can, illegally, sponsor the police force. And exploit me. Illegally."

Everyone looked at him with blank expressions. Pizzaz's face squeezed up because her Midori sour ice cream was very sour.

Avery continued: "...Anyway. I woke up and I realized a bunch of people drew dicks on my face. So I started having my mental breakdown du jour, like, why do people see me as some kind of fictional persona, instead of a real human with feelings? You know?" (Nobody seemed to.) "And I started having this _huge_ fit in the middle of the street, screaming about wanting ice cream, and about not killing Applique. Blah blah. That's _so me_ , right?" He fake-laughed so hard he wiped away a fake tear, like he was relating some hilarious anecdote.

 

" _So_ ," he clapped Rad on the back in Dazzle's chummy style, "Officer Cunningham here was driving by, and was nice enough to drag this dangerous criminal charity case off the streets, and into the nearest chocklit shoppe!"

Dazzle narrowed his eyes, not convinced. His mouth twitched with steely concentration.

"Then, why did Rad want you to meet his parents–"

"Oh! That." Avery fake laughed again, hysterically, stalling for time. He looked at Rad. Rad looked at him. He looked at Rad. Rad made the minutest of wide-eyed panicked expressions in reply. "Uh...that was..."

Pizzaz's gold chain belt jangled lightly as she set her empty glass down on the table. 

"Probably just Rad being a sarcastic asshole," she said.

"Hey!" Rad pouted and turned away from the group, crossing his arms and tapping his fingers against them, testily.

Then, realization of what Pizzaz was doing: "Oh! Yes. I _was_ just being a sarcastic asshole."

Pizzaz responded with a ghost of an encouraging smile.

Rad continued: "That's me...Very sarcastic...!"

Dazzle's eyebrows hunched together and he placed his palms together underneath his chin.

"Very...asshole..." Rad trailed off.

Just then, another thick vapor cloud of liquid nitrogen began to drift behind Dazzle, looking like fog from a fog machine.

Dazzle craned his neck to glance at it. "Hey, I look really cool right now." 

Admittedly, he did. His hair blew inexplicably in the lack of wind.

"I apologize for my false"—he put on a pair of (new) sunglasses (which was actually really smart in this case, because liquid nitrogen vapor can dry out the eyes and cause permanent damage)—"alle- _gay_ -tions."

Pizzaz's face suddenly softened.

"Dazzle," she said, hooking her arm in his, "Tolerant...Apologetic? It's not you at all, but I like it!"

He smiled a simpering smile. "How _much_ do you like it?"

"...Don't get ahead of yourself."

"I'd rather get ahead from you."

Surprisingly, instead of responding with violence, Pizzaz pulled Dazzle in closer, biting her lip. Dazzle tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

"You're a misogynistic worm, you know that?" she said.

"Well, if I'm the worm, then you're the early bird," Dazzle murmured into her ear.

Pizzaz giggled a kind of raunchy giggle. They stood there looking at each other with googly heart-eyes before saying fuck it and tearing off each other's clothes on top of the nearest table.

"Speaking of early birds," said Rad, "don't you guys have to get to work in like two hours? What are you doing staying up all night?"

Pizzaz gave him the side-eye and asked, "And what are _you_ doing hanging out at Beaver's Creamery during _your_ shift?"

"Uhh–"

"We're taking the day off, and we'll call it even. C'mon, Dat-Azzle!"

She dragged Dazzle by the collar, more than willingly, out the door. The little bell dinged happily over their little lovebird and love-worm heads.

Once they were gone, Rad released a heavy sigh. "I have a feeling we're going to be on our own on this case," he said.

Somehow, Avery didn't think he'd have a problem with that. Excitement gripped him everywhere at once, and he tensed up the muscles in his throat with nervous energy, eagerness welling up and stuck there like a chicken bone. Luckily, he didn't actually squeal or anything.

"Hey, I saw on _Avery Mystery_  you're sleeping in a storage unit...You can crash on my couch if you want, I guess," Rad sighed.

Yep...Avery would _not_ have a problem with that.

He subtly peeked down at his pocket containing Jet's pictures, as if they were now a good luck charm. And because of the droopiness of the pocket, he could just see the back of one of them...

There was a message written on it.


	7. Feeling Like a Bleached Asshole

_"Everything was going my way. I was happily marching into the history books. Then it all just fell apart."_

_"The whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it's total crap to pretend it's not."_

_"You'll never find peace of mind until you listen to your heart."_

\- George Michael

Hey all, I'm really sorry for the long absence! At first I wasn't necessarily planning on continuing this because I'm lazy, but after George Michael's death, I remembered the real purpose(s) of this work, and feel a new sense of energy, obligation, and curiosity. As well as sadness.

George Michael was an awesome person. Not only did he donate millions of dollars — from charities to complete strangers, he wanted to keep his gifts anonymous and private — but he volunteered at homeless shelters. He performed small shows at hospitals. He really actually cared about people, and he also really cared about pop music.

Songs like "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," may be immortalized in the Cheeseball Hall of Fame, but (at least in my opinion) there's a very unexplored and ignored merit to creating happy content, aimed at making people feel better, lighter.

George Michael once did a TV interview with Morrissey. At the time, and probably today, Morissey was the cool one, even if George Michael was more popular.

George Michael was bubbly and effusive and also rather thoughtful in his interview answers, and wearing a sparkly white spandex tank. Let's just say he made the Village People look like actual cops and militiamen, in comparison.

So he wasn't really getting taken seriously. And meanwhile, Morrissey, looking like an 80s Edward Cullen (sorry, I do love Morrissey), is the real musician, defending real music against the mainstream machine. At the time of the interview, Michael had just released "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go," while Morrissey was preparing to release "Heaven Knows I’m Miserable Now."

After Morrissey brought up Joy Division, the interviewer, turning to George and looking snidely tickled, said, "George, I wouldn’t imagine you as a Joy Division fan, maybe I’m wrong?"  
George smiled. "Ah, you might be wrong!" He went on to say that "Closer" was his favorite album.

But more than, "Don't judge a book by its album cover!" "He's deeper than he looks!" I think this shows that, like...you don't have to be a high-culture-person to be an artist. You do whatever do want. You do whatever is appealing to you and you do what you want. Or, as someone in a YouTube comments section described it, George is "sunshine and golden dreams" while Morrissey is "Oscar Wilde."

Without both, we have neither.

So even if you don't appreciate pop, you should appreciate those who cultivate it. Even if you see the "mainstream" as the boring backdrop against which real art and real life take place.

George Michael also said this: "I never minded being thought of as a pop star. People have always thought I wanted to be seen as a serious musician, but I didn't, I just wanted people to know that I was absolutely serious about pop music."

He was serious about pop music, serious about life, serious about being a good person, and serious about his secret. He was gay, he lost his partner to AIDS and couldn't even talk about it, then he was outed, he was ripped apart in the tabloids, suddenly he was caught in the crosshairs of laughing, gaping tabloid-consumerism-assholism.

He was depressed. He was a depressed drug addict. A smart, complex man (who was also fun and energetic and dynamical instead of cynical, and not playing pretend at it), reduced in anguish to a joke at worst, and a disappointment-in-various-ways-former-glory-former-heartthrob at best. Four years ago, when there was another fake scandal about how he was cheating on his boyfriend, George said, in a letter to a friend, "He [the "other man"] told me how they blackmailed him without even telling him who he was supposed to have met up there in the dark, and some other horrific details of his ordeal, poor bastard … It had a ghastly effect on him, and as no one gives a shit about celebs I thought his evidence might be of more use."

But George also said, "...I feel great these days, clean as a whistle, and with almost a complete album ready to go, this year is going to be a good one, I think."

He never finished the album. There is debate as to whether or not to release the songs. There was also a documentary supposed to be released in March, entitled "Freedom."

Now, the natural tendency is to tie that title, "Freedom," into a final paragraph about legacy. About pride, and hope, and art, and fulfillment. About how George Michael influenced and inspired others, publicly and privately, and in that paragraph I was also going to call him "exuberant" but depending on your own mood when you read that, it sounds stupid.

He's no more "sunshine and golden dreams" than the rest of us, because while he accomplished great things and left such a positive and encouraging impact on the world, nothing about it was easy, and often it's the damage that sticks. George Michael's life story, not that I'm remotely qualified to say what it is, is about how it is very difficult, strikingly difficult, to be yourself. There is no greater fear, and no greater joy, in that kind of freedom.

Fear, and joy.

It can be both — and, similarly, George Michael's legacy doesn't have to be either tragically incomplete, or wrapped up in a nice happy little bow. It's neither, and it's both.

Or as he says, "It's almost required with major artists that there's some duality. And I've got duality everywhere."

I really hope you enjoy the rest of this story, about the worst and foulest kinds of being exploited, about shitty record labels (which also applies to Prince), and about being (finding out how to be) your own damn self.

And again, I am sincerely sorry for the long wait...If there's anyone who's read to this point, please know that you're fantastic and I wish I could give you a giant hug! If you wanted. Yanno. So anyway...

 

* * *

 

Rad stopped the police car under an arch made of pure diamonds.

The arch was lit insanely white and bright from the inside, producing a fiery dispersed rainbow effect. Avery, who had been dozing, woke up with sparkles in his eyes.

 _Home_ , he thought to himself...

"I miss living here. Being homeless is lame," he mumbled, staring straight up out the window to the cascade of brilliant diamonds, like a waterfall frozen in mid-air.

"Wait, what are we doing in Diamond Crest?" he asked groggily.

"I live here," Rad shifted easily in his seat, sighing. It could have been a happy sigh, and thus a rather cruel barb — or it could have been an unhappy sigh. Or, it could have been more of a yawn, considering it was nearly 5 AM.

The security guard waved her long red talons in front of Rad.

"'Scuse me, who are you?"

"Um, I'm Mr. Blastrod's...roommate..." Rad answered.

(One will remember that Mr. Blastrod was the owner of the poolhouse Rad lived in.)

The security guard "tch-ed" loudly.

"Okay, whatever. But today he started doin' some massive renovations to the front of the house. You'll have to go through the back door."

Back door, huh?...Avery held his tongue. Low-hanging fruit.

Rad nodded, and tipped his imaginary police cap to her. She tch-ed again. They drove on in, with LEDs shining brilliantly but narrowly onto the impossibly grand Estates, so that only they were illuminated and the streets and hills leading to the mansions were all dark.

There it was, high up on a hill, at an imperious angle like it was glaring at the two of them. Floodlights chased all the way up its hundred or so feet, eight or nine rather ridiculous glassy floors.

Once they stepped out of the car, they were lost in total darkness, except the giant back door was visible like a faraway mirage. It stood high above them, at the end of a high incline they now began to climb.

A tangle of brush and weeds came to their waists.

Avery trudged up, bending forward to keep his balance, waving his arms out in front of him. (Rad had already vetoed the idea of holding hands.)

It was eerily quiet except for the harsh, vaguely scary hiss of cicadas and locusts, surviving the creeping November chill.

Suddenly, Avery heard a loud crunch.

He spun around in a pirouette that would have been impressive if anyone'd seen. His heart pounded, leapt in his throat.

"What was that?"—as if afraid the locusts were ganging up on them—"Rad? Ra–"

He tripped forward, right on top of Rad, who had already fallen. Avery started to slip slowly down the muddy hill. He scrambled to find purchase and grabbed a burly expanse of shoulder.

"Get off me!" Rad yelped.

"Sorry!" Avery's thighs trembled as he tried to push himself up. It was a mix of the feverish sweetness of being on top of Rad, and the soggy wet ground threatening to send them both plummeting down to the craggy rocks below, that made him tremble uncontrollably, feeling heat and cold alternate down his legs.

" _Off_ –"

"Too...slippery..." His feet slid in the mud once again and his jaw collided with the top of Rad's cranium. His top teeth gave his bottoms a sound cracking before his face pancaked into Rad's warm ample forearm and tickling hairs. He was straddled over one of Rad's legs.

Rad huffed impatiently. "Okay, now this is just becoming excessive..." He let out a heavy, exhausted groan that reverberated in Avery's chest.

"What is?" Avery mumbled, smirking to himself in Rad's armpit, chancing indiscretion: "The sexual tension?"

"I will...push you down...this hill..." Rad warned, losing his breath as he tried to stay still on the slope.

But instead, Rad was the one who started slipping, slow and then all of a sudden fast–

"Help me! Help me!"

Avery, squinting madly to see, spun himself around and caught Rad's wrist. But Rad continued gliding down, faster and faster, pulling Avery along with him, and in the frightening darkness the two of them may as well have been tobogganing off a cliff.

"Don't let go of me! Don't let go of me!" Rad wheezed out, grasping Avery's hair.

"Ouch! I'm not!" The blood rushed to Avery's head as it was pulled downward. He kept his hold as Rad panicked about being too young to die. Avery's forearm muscles buckled under Rad's weight as Rad swung his arms wildly, and Avery focused all his energy on clamping his fingers together, but he was slipping, slipping, feeling the freezing mud tear into his arms and stomach.

Suddenly, a row of floodlights were illuminated at the bottom of the hill...Showing that the two of them were only about 15 feet high.

And right next to a flight of stairs.

"Ohh." They realized it together.

A voice at the top of the hill boomed out, "Cunningham, you fustilarian blockhead! What are you doing mud-wrestling a hooker on my hillock?"

A guard bulldog barked angry circles around them as they wearily slid their way over to the steps and trudged on up.

"Uh...I'm really sorry, Mr. Blastrod," Rad said, then quickly amended, "Uh. I mean. _Roomie_?"

"'Roomie'?! What in tarnation are you on about–" Mr. Blastrod began.

Then, he and Avery recognized each other at the same time.

"Wait a minute, Avery? Is that you? You look terrible!"

Mr. Blastrod's smile was a combination of fake pity and utter delight.

"Yes, indeed, you look like a bootless, common-kissing clotpole!"

Avery didn't respond. He got to the top of the stairs and the bulldog, by way of introduction, drooled on his shoes.

"My God," Mr. Blastrod continued, "why don't you come into your house— _my_ house, I mean, of course, _my_ house! It's my house now. And get yourself cleaned up.

"What were you doing, by the way, pray tell? Were you trying to break in? I suppose by all rights I should call the police," he regarded Rad and snarled, "but I'll be forgiving. Out of house and crystal house dome, and forced onto the streets, you poor, poor boy!" He barely concealed a smile behind sparkling eyes.

Fetching a kerchief from his waistcoat pocket, he draped it over Avery's shoulder disgustedly, before putting his hand on top.

Avery was totally confused. And pissed. But mostly confused.

 

* * *

 

Avery knew the house looked familiar. It was his old house! He probably should have, like, immediately recognized that, but all the houses in Diamond Crest looked basically the same. Except for the fact that his was nicer. Had been. Used to be.

Well, it still was.

And, so, Rad was living here? With that bombastic dickface Rodney Blastrod?

...What?

"The Sparks Mansion is in wonderful hands, don't you worry."

His former neighbor Rodney was more than smug, he was positively giddy, as they made their way round winding footpaths to the back of the house. His full black beard and satiny black mane shook as he laughed with mirthful glee.

"So you moved into my house. That's...great, Rodney," Avery stared up at the monstrosity, with the huge round towers and spires and buttresses and turrets sticking up everywhere in what may or may not have been phallic shapes.

Rodney Blastrod turned to Rad, a hard-to-read smile on his face: "What do you think, is this the _largest mansion_ in Diamond Crest Estates?"

What was Rad's involvement in all this? Avery gave him a dirty look.

Rad gulped, feeling extra put on the spot.

"Um, like, I don't know the exact square meterage, so..." He trailed off into a nervous, croaky laugh.

Rodney ignored him.

"Avery, remember when you told me"—Rodney pitched up his voice, made it mild-mannered and chime-like, like Avery's—"'My house is just a bit bigger than yours, I think.'

...And you know..." Rodney opened the giant glass doors, "...I think you're right. Your house was bigger all along."

Bristling at the irony, Avery walked in. His eyes widened reflexively. Everything was still in its place, one month after his arrest.

The huge foyer, white marble punctuated by glossy black Lucite furniture, a dark salutary charm. Parisian sophistication, color contrasts. And again, the foyer alone was the size of a coliseum.

Holy fuck. Avery _did_ miss this. His stomach dropped.

He missed everything being...shiny, and...easy.

He sat down at the baby grand synthesizer. Still right where he left it. He placed his hands on the keys and realized he'd forgotten how to play. Had long forgotten how to play, actually.

"Gadzooks, that's a sad face," Rodney laughed at Avery's broken reverie. "Remember, you shall not covet your neighbor's house.

You shall not covet your neighbor's wife." Rodney belly-laughed at that idea.

"...Or his manservant."

Rodney glared at Rad, hardhearted.

"Anyway, my maids will arrive soon to escort you two to be cleaned up."

He left. Rad plopped down at the piano next to Avery and rolled his eyes.

"Pfft. That guy, right?"

Rad played "Chopsticks," over and over again, humming along.

"Dah-dah-dah-dah-dah-dah- _dah_!"

It was like he was trying to entertain a young child to prevent a tantrum, but it really wasn't working, as Avery slammed his fist on the keys, interrupting the happy little staccato hops.

Rad yelped.

Avery screwed up his shiny silver eyes, demanding an explanation.

"I'm sorry," Rad laughed nervously. His affable, sibilant voice (and Canadian accent on "sorry") were hard to stay mad at. "This didn't go like I planned."

"So, when you said we were going back to your place, and then you took me back to my old house instead," Avery pointed one index finger up and the other down, and intertwined his arms, as if to illustrate the complexity, "so you and Rodney could rub it in my face how you guys live here...together...now...or whatever...What exactly was your plan?"

"Just _hang on_ a second!" Rad sputtered exasperatedly. "The truth is, I don't live here. Not legally, I mean. Rodney...lets me stay in the poolhouse if I clean the pool and the jacuzzi. Which, by the way, has never been more filthy!" he shuddered.

"Oh!" Avery's anger had already diminished. "So that's why you had to go in through my back door!"

Rad rolled his eyes again. "The door that's a door, and not a metaphor.

"But, yeah. I didn't know you used to live here."

Rad seemed oddly jittery for it being nearly five in the morning (as shown by a gigantic neon clock hanging by wire from the ceiling).

Avery regarded his former surroundings once again. The staircase made out of miniature staircases. The other staircase, with a river of fondue running down the center of the steps, and samples of breads and wines decorating the railing.

And suddenly, he felt...oddly relieved that all this shit wasn't his shit anymore.

He looked back at Rad, who was hunched over the piano a bit, staring down vacantly. A little sadly. His brilliant purple jacket was caked in mud, but Avery's eyes were drawn more to where it gaped open and Rad's hairy chest was glistening with sweat.

Avery cleared his throat daintily: "So, I live in a storage unit and you live in the poolhouse?" Avery smiled, damn it all.

Rad didn't answer for a minute. But then he perked up, his green eyes dancing.

"My poolhouse is just a bit _bigger_ than your storage unit, I think." He impersonated Avery's soft, mellifluous voice (the way Rodney had).

Avery scoffed loudly, indulgently. "I think we'd have to check the square meterage on that."

"Oh, yeah?" With a bared-teeth smile Rad slapped Avery playfully on the shoulder.

"Yeah," Avery shot back, putting his hands on Rad's burly shoulders and giving a push.

Rad grabbed one of Avery's arms and easily slung him off the piano bench. As Rad raced around the piano so Avery couldn't get to him, Avery noticed from this vantage point on the floor, he could see that the front edge of some of the piano keys had rainbow colors painted on them. Aww. Seemed a bit...symbolic? He beamed inly.

Wait a second.

"I didn't paint this," Avery muttered to himself.

Taken by a strange gut feeling, he played the keys. Red...orange—

Before he could get to the rest, a jolt of fury convulsed through him, overtaking his muscles and juddering them into action.

Rad ducked behind the piano.

"You got those red eyes again! Oh shit, oh shit–"

He chanted the expletive lightning-fast, crawling under the piano, like that would do any good if Avery was really in whatever "mode" this was.

_C'mon, think, Avery, think._

He panicked to himself, trying to think of a way to snap himself out of it now that he sort-of-kind-of knew the cause. Orange. A music note. The orange music note. That...didn't even make sense?

What was the opposite color of orange? Maybe if he thought really, really, hard about that, whatever that color was, he could regain control over himself? Okay, black and white were opposites. Red and purple, were they opposites? Did that mean orange and blue were opposites? That didn't make any sense.

Luckily, as Avery was trying to sort out color theory in his head, he found himself diving for the staircase with the cheesy fondue running down it, instead of attacking Rad.

Just then, the two maids walked into the room. Avery could only tell that from the clink of stilettos on the floor, as he couldn't control his gaze, which was currently full of cheddar. Avery felt a bit rude not lifting his lips from the stream of cheese to say hello, but he just couldn't stop lapping up the salty substance.

"Hi there! We're here to escort you to the baths!" one said perkily.

"Oh, uh, hey there ladies! Ouch!" Rad had presumably conked his head, on the way out from under the piano.

"Is everything...okay?" chirped the other.

"Oh! Yeah, yeah, for sure. I definitely wasn't hiding from Avery eating fondue. That's definitely not what was happening here. At all."

The maids murmured hesitant "okays."

"So anyway, you ladies are gonna escort me to the bath? You're, uh, welcome to join in, too, if you know what I mean. I wouldn't mind seeing the two of you all lathered up, playing a little slap and tickle with each other—Ouch!" Rad had presumably been smacked by one or both of them.

"Wait! Colette! Décollete! It was just a joke! Come back...

"Great. Thanks a lot, Avery. I would usually be way more suave than that and never say anything so...tasteless, but I was all freaked out trying to cover for you."

Avery would have rolled his eyes if he could have even done that instead of single-mindedly gorging on cheese like some sort of...Cheese Gorgon. Speaking of tasteless, um, this cheese.

"Now they'll never be interested in me," Rad lamented.

Avery burned with jealousy, so much he would've screamed if he were able, as he helplessly tongued the love tunnel of fondue. God damnit.

"Cunningham! Avery!" Mr. Blastrod's booming voice reverberated through the halls.

"I didn't do anything!" Rad shouted.

Mr. Blastrod just laughed. "I thought you two might want to see what's on TV."

Avery could hear Mr. Blastrod's heavy footsteps getting closer to him.

"My boy, you'd better be watching your diet, seeing as it looks like you're not going to prison after all. Come watch."

"Uh...what?" Rad echoed Avery's thoughts exactly.

A switch clicked. Avery nearly got his tongue stuck as a metal partition slid over the river of fondue.

Just like that, with the orange out of sight, Avery was released from mental servitude.

Stimulus removed. Whatever the "stimulus" was, exactly. None of this made any sense...

"Hello?" Rodney waved a hand in front of Avery's face. "Present, comrade?"

"Hm?" Avery was still shaking off the last vestiges of the mind control, face ashen, palms sweaty.

"You've been exonerated, you halfwit!" Rodney laughed a hearty laugh and clapped Avery on the back of the head. "Come watch the news before it's over."

And so, everyone high-tailed it to the rec room (one of many) to do just that. Avery and Rad exchanged confused glances, but Rad smiled and shrugged. Avery couldn't return it. He exhaled hard out his nose. Was he even human? Was he some sort of magical alien faerie controlled by musical notes—

"Hello and welcome to the Early Bird Morning News, I'm Genesis Jones. The execs make me say that every two minutes now." Genesis' lip curled up in contempt, though it was hard to tell with his full black beard.

"Like I just got done saying just two minutes ago, fans of _The Avery Mystery_ will be upset to hear that the show has been cancelled, as Avery's case was dropped."

Avery felt excitement build in some quarter of his stomach.

"According to an anonymous, but, erm, very affluential tip, Sparks Avery was forced to take some sort of powerful drug. The drug caused him to go insane and murder Appliqué Johnson. Among those implicated are Jazz Cox — Avery's, er, handler — as well as Pizzaz Miller, our city's Police Chief; and Eo Jaxxon, who you all know is our mayor. Well...maybe, like, ten percent of you know he's our mayor. Honestly everyone in this town is pretty stupid..."

Genesis and his co-anchor argued back and forth over whether the Moonbeam citizens were politically aware enough to know who their mayor was, until the camera was nearly knocked over and a flurry of carrot-colored hair blocked the lens.

"Wait! Wait-wait-wait!" The figure turned around and readjusted the camera.

"I'm Chrysalis Tate, I'm an officer. I feel it's my civic duty to inform the public that this case is not officially closed. Our forensic team found no drugs in Avery's system except for a toxic level of a red pigment called astaxanthin, which should have killed him.

"However, it does not induce hallucinations, paranoia, delusions, or supernatural strength. I repeat, there were no drugs in Avery's system at the time of the murder.

"So, as of right now, the police department, or...what remains of it...is trying to gather more evidence to absolve our police chief, who was only forced under duress to go along with the plot to frame Avery for murder—"

Genesis peeked out from behind Chrysalis:

"Actually, Miss Tate, I think you've made a miss-take. Hah. Wow. Why I never made it in comedy is beyond me. Anyway, this case is super closed, like, my-wife's-vagina closed. Hah. Again!"

He smirked at the camera and adjusted his tie smartly, as security escorted Chrysalis offscreen.

Avery and Rodney all stared at one another expectantly. Rad watched, angry yet entertained, as Chrysalis struggled and was dragged away.

In the background, Genesis and his co-anchor discussed a reality TV show starring Jaxxon/Jazz/Pizazz in prison. They argued over the best way to combine the names.

_"Pizzaxxon"?_

Avery shook his head back and forth, feeling unsteady. Something was so utterly wrong about all this, even if it confirmed exactly what he'd known all along, that he was framed.

_What about "Jaxxazz"?_

"It's like I said, they all framed me and set me up and exploited me. For money," Avery said quietly.

_Hah. "Jaxxazz" for sure. You win this round._

Rodney clapped Avery on the back, making use of the handkerchief again as Avery was now caked with cheese in addition to the mud.

"It's all show business, boy. Don't take it too personally." He cleared his throat. "Just thought you'd like to know."

"I don't think I know anything," Avery returned, his voice chime-like and whimsical as ever. "There are still so many missing pieces. Like, why did that one Mal guy try and kill me? And why did he freak out because he was wearing orange? And—"

A sudden contemptuous spasm of Rodney's mouth made Avery stop there.

He cleared his throat. His eyes were shifty, perched on a face that was almost all black beard, "Avery. You're covered in filth and fromage. It's five in the morning. You should shower and sleep. Douche et dormir."

Rad turned his attention away from the chatter on TV, to snort at "douche."

"Uh, yeah. I'm pretty tired. Thanks."

Jaxxon was guilty. Unfortunately, so was Pizazz.

And as for Jazz, she was, like, the devil.

Justice served. Right?

 

* * *

 

Sleep came easily. Avery woke up in a jumble of cool silk sheets, in silk pajamas, sighing blissfully into a dark, silent room. He almost blinded himself throwing open the blackout curtains.

"Hello, world!" he yelled, stepping out to the balcony overlooking hillsides and suburbs, the great city beyond, and the ocean as a barely visible line blurring into the bright blue horizon. It was windy and freezing outside. A cheese-smeared lock of hair smacked him in the face. (He must have missed that while showering.)

Avery never smoked before, but for some reason this cold, bleary-eyed, yet beautiful day, air crackling with the electric static of new possibilities, made him want to try. He went back inside to the nearest kitchen and found some cigarettes in a drawer.

He found a matchbox, and dragged the yellow end of a cigarette against the matchbox striker.

_This is how you do it, right?_

Nothing happened. He dragged it a little faster. Still nothing.

"Ugh, the box must be expired," he mumbled to himself.

Oh, wait a sec...He'd seen people in movies use those "lighter" things, to smoke, and light Molotov cocktails, and make fires in caves, and all that manly shit. Some dudes carried around lighters in their pockets—

Wait. His pocket. His _pocket_.

Jesus Christ. How could have forgotten?! That note Jet had written on the back of the Polaroid, it was still in his pants pocket!

Avery fled back to the bedroom and snatched up his pants, paranoid that the Polaroid would be gone.

Nope, still there. Him and Rad, kissing in the wan moonlight, the poor photo quality making it teasingly ambiguous as to whether Rad was kissing him back. Yet, not such poor photo quality that Avery wasn't totally tingling and treasuring.

Oh yeah, and it had some kind of note written on the back of it that could potentially be integral to the case and solving the conspiracy behind Appliqué's murder, and stuff.

There was a knock at the double doors.

"Knock-a-doodle-doo!" Rad burst into the room. He was still wearing the same clothes from yesterday. Or, an imperceptibly different getup, in a barely different color, probably, because it wasn't covered in mud.

Avery was sitting on the floor with his back against the side of the big satiny bed, holding the photo. He blushed deep.

"What? What's that you got?" Rad narrowed his green eyes.

"Uh! Nothing!" Avery chirped.

Rad obviously wasn't going to accept that answer. He lunged forward. Avery stood up and spun around, shielding the photo under crossed arms.

"Give it!" Rad huffed through clenched teeth, ramming against Avery from behind and grappling at his arms.

They fell forward onto the bed, Avery crossing his arms tighter. He could feel Rad's thighs rippling out against his own silk-covered glutes, as Rad crushed a robust arm muscle into Avery's stomach. Rad was quickly Red-Rovering his way to the secret.

"Hah!" Rad gripped the photo and Avery was too dazed by Rad's fingers intertwined sweatily around his — Rad's body smashing his into the slippery bed like a large, hard, yet forgiving vise — to put up more of a fight. Rad disentangled himself. His always-exposed chest was a bit red. Avery's heart hammered. He was blushing so deeply and hotly he wouldn't have been surprised if the blush started eating into his fucking face like a flesh-eating virus.

Rad help the photo curiously in front of his face for a moment, before recognizing what it was.

He guffawed, harder and harder, until he was doubled over in tears, beginning unintelligible sentences and wheezing. He stared at Avery with an open-mouthed churlish grin, like Avery was the victim of an awfully good prank.

"You really...you just...and you...Oh-ho-ho..." (Canadian "o.")

Finally Rad collected himself. Avery sat there sort of clearing his throat, not in an "Excuse me," way but as an involuntary nervous response.

Rad wiped away a tear. "Man, you've got it bad. This is just depressing."

"Okay, okay," Avery snapped. "You don't have to rub it in my face."

"But that's exactly what you want me to do, isn't it?"

Avery froze. He stared at Rad, who looked insufferably cocky, but at the same time, really let the question mark hang there with a fat, throbbing ellipsis on the end.

Avery glanced down and back up, a nod that wasn't really a nod in case nodding would have been a bad idea.

A grating, gnawing silence.

Which Rad promptly broke by laughing his ass off again.

Avery blushed even redder. He kept tripping over a defective tongue but finally got himself to say, "Look on the back side—"

Rad chuckled one last time, perhaps over "backside" or perhaps the situation in its entirety.

"...Huh." Rad's expression suddenly changed to one of unconcerned confusion, but confusion nonetheless.

"What's it say?" Avery asked, but then quickly corrected himself to sound less pathetic: "...I mean, I've totally read it before now, but yeah, weird, right?"

Avery got up and looked at the note:

 _Red kills Orange_  
_Orange kills Yellow_  
_Yellow kills Green_  
_Green killed Blue_  
_Blue Indigo killed Violet._

His eyes fluttered wide in shock.

Avery sat on the bed, hand to his chin, rosy little lips pouted in thought.

"Okay, I have to tell you something super duper important I haven't gotten the chance to tell you yet," he said.

Rad scoffed lightheartedly. "Oh?"

"Seriously!" Avery plopped his hands in his lap animatedly. "You know the piano? Well, I noticed that the keys of the middle major C scale — that's, you know, the 'Do, Re, Mi' scale — were labeled with colors." He jumped up. "I didn't do that," he avowed, "so it must have been Rodney, right?

Here, let me draw it."

Rad stood there confused as Avery ran out of the room, produced a sheaf of paper and a box of Moon-Art colored pencils, and then went to work like some kind of mad genius:

"Okay," Rad said, "so Rodney likes to paint on pianos. No biggie."

"Yes, biggie!" Avery gushed, flinging his arms out excitedly, expectantly. "Super biggie."

Rad's nose wrinkled. "Okay..."

"See, remember what happened, I went all crazy again? Well, just before that, I pressed the orange piano key. I heard the sound, which would have been...note D. And then I went crazy again!"

"So you go crazy for the D? I think that's a surprise to absolutely ah-no-one."

Avery blushed again, but this time out of indignation. "This isn't funny," he murmured. "I accidentally killed Appliqué."

He turned away from Rad, a rusty guillotine blade of pain landing squarely between his ribs. He held the red Moon-Art colored pencil, rotating it back and forth so that "Moon-Art" glinted mysteriously in the morning light.

He fell back on the bed. He dramatically threw his arm over his eyes, like an aggrieved mistress of the silver screen.

Rad sighed and sat at the foot of the bed.

"Look...As a cop, I'm used to dealing with civilian casualties all the time. Sometimes a shootout goes wrong. Sometimes Dazzle accidentally sends the Slutburger food truck and its staff careening into a gas station in a fatal explosion. Sometimes somebody, who was not me, goes in the Hall of Mirrors at the Moonbeam Carnival and drops their cherries jubilee kebab on the wood floor. And then the fire department gets lost in the Hall and perishes, while trying to put out the fire."

Avery lowered the crook of his arm from his eyes down to his mouth, puffy confused eyes peeking over the top.

"...Huh?" The word was muffled by a satin sleeve.

"What I'm trying to say is"—Rad said spittily, visibly annoyed by his epic speech not getting its deserved reception—"it doesn't matter what you do on accident. It matters what you do on purpose."

He cast his eyes downward in a moment of contemplation.

"To fix things," he said.

At this, the changeable Avery sat back up again, smiling.

"You're right!"

"...I am?"

"Yup!" He bounced on the bed excitedly before blindsiding Rad with a hug.

Rad let out a juddering, "Geez!"

He was tense for a moment — solid and sturdy — then softened, an audible adjustment, a crinkle of fabric.

Not wanting to push his luck (and Avery had had a fair bit of that, he admitted), the satin-clad vamp withdrew.

"Let's go fix things," Avery pitched his voice low and decisive.

But his actual essence, unable to be contained, bubbled forth. He bit his bottom lip and squealed with pure delight, beaming at Rad. Rad rolled his eyes. Avery bounded out the door, swung around the door frame like it was a pole.

"Hey wait, where are you going?" Rad asked. No answer. Rad yelled a Canadian "Hell-ooh?"

Rad picked up the piano drawing Avery had left behind, even though it looked 100% like the sketches of a crazy gay Mozart, or something. He also carefully copied the note on the back of the Polaroid onto a separate paper. (Tampering with evidence, shmampering with shmevidence!)

He left the room with a sigh.

 

* * *

 

"Hello, Officer Tate! I've come to save the day!"

Chrysalis shot up from her desk, startled and frazzled.

There was Avery, flashing a plastic sheriff's badge in her face. He was wearing a shiny vinyl blue motorcycle jacket that was skin-tight enough to show off a body designed to be palatable yet unintimidating for a fanbase of teenage girls.

Officers sat glumly in their colorful tempered glass desks, the A/C droning loudly into the big, quiet, shadowy precinct.

Until Dazzle walked in — he was walking in circles, muttering Pizzaz's name over and over again soddenly to himself.

None of the other cops even looked up. Dazzle exhaled, sounding shivery, and spotted Avery.

"You." He stormed right for Avery, yanked Avery out of the cowering position to which he had immediately defaulted, and lifted him up by the shiny collar. "This is all your fault!"

The metal teeth of Avery's zipper bit into his neck, but he choked out, "It's my fault people went to jail for framing me for murder?"

"Yes!" Dazzle shouted. "You were supposed to be framed, but you're not getting the picture."

"That doesn't make any–"

"Sense? Nothing does." Dazzle shook his fist at the sky, still holding onto Avery. "Now that our patroness of policehood Pizazz is in prison...'sense' is only a concept for hobos. Because. You know. 'Sense.' 'Cents.' They want coins."

Avery kicked his feet in the air, writhing as Dazzle's knuckles dug into his chin.

"Candelabra! Candelabra! Candelabra!" he choked.

Somehow (perhaps not surprisingly) Dazzle understood what that meant, and let Avery go.

"A man who doesn't respect safewords is not a real man," Dazzle said sagely. "That doesn't mean you're off the hook, though." He walked back in the direction of the hallway from which he came, as if his whole purpose for entering the main office bullpen had been to lament in front of an audience.

"Off the hook for what?" Avery called after him.

Chrysalis offered a hand and pulled Avery up off the floor. She blew a lock of hair out of her face.

"Sorry about him. He's really broken up about Chief Miller going to prison," she said, exhausted.

"So." Avery opened what he could only guess would be a long, convoluted dialogue about what exactly was going on. "What exactly is going on?"

Chrysalis chuckled, a bit hysterically. "Wish I knew. How about we go to the lounge, you tell me what you've found out."

They walked through the station that was as large as ever, and as based around a chic neon architectural-glass aesthetic as ever.

They sat across from one another in the lounge. Avery thought this was a real step up from being handcuffed in the interrogation room. It was nice to be in a police station as an almost-sort-of-cop, instead of as a criminal.

Officer Avery began:

"Okay. So. If you didn't know already, I had a run-in last night with this guy, I guess his name was Mal. Really creepy-looking dude. I'm talking, 'sweat-drenched mustache' creepy. He tried to kill me."

Chrysalis' eyes widened, weary as she was.

"Sweat-drenched mustache? That has to be...Malachi Green."

"Yeah?" Avery half-asked, half-affirmed.

"He's wanted for the murder of Indigo Blue! Last year!" Chrysalis stood up and clasped her hand to her mouth, either excited or terrified (knowing the rookie cop, a bit of both). "Did he run away? Do you know where he was going?"

"Um, he ran, like, to the right...which I think would have been east, because the moon was a crescent moon. Yep. Definitely to the right."

Chrysalis inhaled very sharply. "...Okay, that only helps if I know _where_ you were when this happened."

"Uh. The abandoned warehouse."

Chrysalis, likely resisting the urge to strangle him: "The abandoned warehouse? Which abandoned warehouse?"

"I don't know! I got lost!" This whole "Officer Avery saving the day" thing was quickly, miserably coming apart at the seams.

"Um, it's close to Beaver's Creamery?" he offered.

Chrysalis, now knowing the place, made a quick phone call to send a crime scene response unit there. Unfortunately, the police procedural drama only became more dramatic, as every extra spear carrier was drunk off their ass.

She slammed the phone down.

"Alright, just...continue. So what happened with Mal?"

"Well." Avery smiled a pursed-lip smile, of having a real story to tell. "Rad — erm, Officer Cunningham — showed up, and totally saved my ass. But then something super weird happened. Mal started humming, and suddenly I was attacking Rad."

Chrysalis bristled a little at this, like she'd forgotten about Avery's dangerous nature. She glanced down furtively, presumably checking to make sure she had a weapon.

"I couldn't stop myself," Avery clarified quickly, pleadingly. "It was like mind control. It was like Mal's humming was hypnotizing me."

Chrysalis tapped her pen frustratedly against the side of her head.

"Okay. Before, you said you were forced to take drugs, and you think the drugs made you kill Appliqué."

Avery exhaled. "Right, but I don't remember anything from that night. I just know Jazz and my bodyguard would always hold me down and made me take glitz, so I could work and perform for days without sleep."

Chrysalis' mouth twitched. "But, that doesn't add up. The toxicology test didn't show that you had any glitzotrene in your system when you killed Appliqué. Just a lot of astaxanthin."

"Uh, yeah...I have no idea what any of that means. You're gonna have to speak in lay-moron's terms for me," Avery said.

Officers milled in and out, to pour themselves coffees.

Chrysalis answered, "Astaxanthin is a red pigment...It's what gives shrimp and lobster their red color. And it's what makes your hair so cherry red."

Only then did Avery realize his hair was probably redder now than it used to be...it was always pretty bright, but never, like, dyed-red.

"I don't even know what ass-tax...ass-tax-anthem...Aztec–"

"Astaxanthin...I'll just call it 'red pigment.'" the officer corrected helpfully.

"Yeah. I don't know what that is, and I don't dye my hair either. I really don't know what you're talking about." He didn't say it maliciously, just honestly.

"On the bright side, I brought this syringe, that Mal stuck in me when I attacked him. I didn't attack him on purpose, either. But when he stuck me with whatever was in here, I calmed down."

Avery produced a plastic bag with the empty syringe inside.

Chrysalis studied it. "I see some tiny droplets left. We can take this to the lab and figure out what it is."

Dazzle sauntered in for coffee. Avery waved him down and made a friendly little drinking gesture to signal that he wanted some too. He smiled. Dazzle growled.

"You want some coffee? I'll pour the whole pot of _scalding justice_ on you."

Chrysalis intervened, "Hey Dazzle, can you take this syringe to the lab, ask them to see if they can find out what substance was in it originally?"

"Sure thing. The new lab tech is a very lovely lady. But not nearly as lovely as..."

Dazzle trailed off into manly sniffling. He quickly left with the syringe.

Chrysalis sighed deeply, pushing on the ottoman with her feet so that she sunk deeper into the couch she was on.

"It really is too bad."

Avery shook his head reflexively. "Too bad Pizzaz got arrested? But...the chief and the mayor did frame me for murder, right?"

"Not exactly...Let me explain. Dazzle and I arrested you after forensic evidence and the handwritten letter on your personal stationery pointed to you being the killer.

"Meanwhile, the MBPD is on its last legs. No solved cases for weeks."

"Yeah," Avery huffed, "I've noticed you guys, for lack of a better word, suck."

Chrysalis ignored this. "It's all because of a lack of funding," she continued. "The mayor likes spending more city funds on shampoo and spa treatments for his pet jaguars, than on the police protecting this city.

"So, right after the world heard you were going to prison, Vex Mullery's people got in touch with us and offered the department a huge amount of money if we'd be willing to, er, open up your case to the public, and make a TV show out of it."

"Yay, exploitation."

"But no framing. We all thought you committed the crime. And then...the video. When Jet Grooms came down to the station and showed us the video he had, the video of you killing Appliqué...well, we _knew_ you did it."

Avery shook his head with sudden recollection at the mention of Jet.

"Wait, wait. Stop right there. Rad and I saw Jet last night!"

Chrysalis frowned.

"And he, uh, he told me he wanted my car, all threatening-like," Avery said.

"Huh." Chrysalis wrote something down uncertainly.

Avery bolted upright, doing a stilted little mini-dance at remembering what was probably the most important part of the conspiracy so far. "Jet dropped this note. I was wondering if you could make anything of it?"

Of course...this was not the note on the back of the Polaroid, but a copy Rad had written on a blank sheet.

"Okay. This is getting really complicated," Chrysalis sighed down at the paper, hair nearly completely down out of its ponytail.

"You're telling me. Too many loose plot threads."

"Exactly...Also, this is Rad's handwriting. I know because he writes lowercase g's to look like sperm."

"Oh!" Avery panicked. "That's because, um, Jet's handwriting was so bad, Rad had to rewrite it."

Nice save.

"Well, if this note is a clue about who the person behind the murder conspiracy is...it would be nice to have the original, so Jet's fingerprints would be on it."

Avery panicked even more. There was so much he couldn't tell Chrysalis, but also, she was super smart and stuff, and so telling her the whole truth could be the only way to get this case solved.

And...why would Jet write this note in the first place? Was he trying to help them? Misguide them?

"Yeah, that would be nice. But we, uh, lost the original."

Chrysalis just nodded, squinting carefully at Jet's note, as though she couldn't see it well enough even with glasses on:

 _Red kills Orange_  
_Orange kills Yellow_  
_Yellow kills Green_  
_Green killed Blue_  
_Blue Indigo killed Violet._

"Okay, this is starting to come together. Kind of. So, Malachi Green used to be the CEO of the record label Dance Studios. He fell in love with the biggest star on the label, Violet. But then Violet was killed violently, by Indigo Blue–"

"...Who used to be with _my_ record label, Trance Studios!" Avery interrupted, but it did seem significant. "Roy G. Biv talks about him all the time, and how sad he is about Indigo's death."

"Back up, back up... _Roy G. Biv_?" Chrysalis rubbed her temples. "Rainbow colors, Roy G. Biv? There's got to be some connection."

Just then, Rad crashed through the door, panting, tripping over his feet.

"Speaking of...relation..." He smirked a lopsided charming smirk. His eponymous belt buckle was lopsided too. "I need to _borrow_ Avery. For like...an hour."

Avery's jaw absolutely dropped. What did that mean? Whatever it was, he was dutifully, comically ready for it. His chest and hands were on stinging fire as he scampered to the door, nearly knocking Rad over. Rad grumbled.

Chrysalis shook the confusion out of her skull. "What?"

"...What?" Rad answered blankly.

"If this isn't, um, pertinent to the case..." She eked out each word very carefully, as if afraid of saying something wrong. Her legs bounced like Mexican jumping beans. Which was fitting, because Mexican jumping beans are actually not beans at all, but seed pods similar to a chrysalis for moth larvae—

"Wait! Wait wait wait!" Rad shrieked. "Not like that."

Chrysalis smiled a neutral, "I'm waiting," smile. She blew another lock of escaping orange-y hair out of her face.

"I need Avery to come with me when I meet my parents," Rad said.

He looked so hopeful, so almost-innocent, despite the square strength of his jaw. How could Chrysalis could say no to that face?

Then, Dazzle walked in. Ever cosmically the worst (or the best?) at timing. He was carrying a bottle of bleach for some reason.

"Oh ho ho!" Dazzle dropped the bleach. It made a rubbery "thunk" on the cream-colored glass tile. "So it is true! You and Avery are together!"

"Nuh, nuh-nuh, ngh-n-n-n, no!"

Dazzle, not currently of the humor to disembowel Rad's self-esteem, only exhaled a long, low whistle.

Except, that was just about the worst thing he could've done.

Note D. Dazzle was humming a note D. Avery felt himself catch fire again, like hot molten steel was being poured into his veins. The killer instinct built up fast and antsy like a drum roll.

At this point, Avery knew the next orange thing he laid eyes on was going to be on the receiving end of his power.

Before he had time to consider how not being on the receiving end was kind of a new concept for him, Avery locked onto something orange.

Namely, Chrysalis' hair.

Holy nightmare on replay. Such high-octane fury...feeling outside his body yet again, as the animalistic tingle and twitch made him run towards Chrysalis.

Everything was in slow-motion.

Control it, he repeated to himself, as calm and level as possible.

Chrysalis instinctively reached for the gun she didn't have, but after that she faltered. Still sitting on the couch, she threw a pillow at Avery as he barreled to tackle her, which would have been almost funny if not for how the tackle made a sickening, sobering crunch as they landed on the floor.

She screeched like a wildcat as Avery yanked at her ponytail — with his teeth. As Dazzle and Rad approached, Rad armed, Avery shook his head wildly, rabid dog. Chrysalis screamed again as she was whiplashed around by the neck.

"Help me!" She pushed her hands against Avery's chin. She landed ineffective rabbit punches against the back of Avery's neck as he dragged her around, a poor chew toy.

Dazzle put Avery in a chokehold, creating a weird fighting conga line.

"Ouch!" Dazzle yelped as Chrysalis punched him repeatedly in the forearm.

Rad stood there shaking in his saddle shoes, pointing his gun at the wall behind everyone.

Chrysalis cried out as Avery's sharp, wrenching jerks threatened to snap her neck.

"He's going to tear my—"

There were quite a few options for ending that sentence, but before Chrysalis could, Avery managed to rip out a small tuft of her hair, wet between his teeth, and she screamed.

"Holy bald patch!" Dazzle said. At this point he was outright trying to strangle Avery. Wasn't working.

"What are you waiting for! _Shoot your goddamned boyfriend_!" Dazzle yelled at Rad.

Rad shook his head frantically to and fro (vaguely either denial or disbelief).

"He's going to kill her!"

Avery let go of Chrysalis's hair and then grasped her by the neck, contorting it slowly into a dangerous upward flexion. She laid there helplessly on the tile.

"Fucking shoot him!" Dazzle lept up from the ground and grabbed for Rad's gun. "Shoot him!"

"Wait, shoot him!" Rad jumped for sudden joy, and to keep the gun away from Dazzle. "That's it! I know what to do!"

But Dazzle wasn't having the sudden revelation. He punched Rad in the gut and reached for the gun again.

Meanwhile, Avery was emotionally shitting himself. Not physically, because the mind control wasn't allowing him to control even involuntary bowel movements. But, like, he knew that if he was currently in any control of his faculties, he'd definitely be shitting himself. He stared hard at his hands, these evil, pale, manicured little hands. Panic attacks shot through him, but the emotion was all penned in to the hard, unmovable stone gargoyle of a body he was trapped in.

 _Please, just kill me._ The thought was a repeated icy knife down his spine. _Rad, you_ need _to kill me._

Rad seethed in pain, spitting (blood?) across the room. The Dazzle/Rad rivalry had always been, well, a rivalry, but this turning point felt like barbed wire through the intestines, as opposed to the usual jab.

Dazzle knocked the wind out of Rad again, this time knocking him to the ground. Rad coughed a high-pitched hacking cough. Avery was both horrified and relieved. He just waited for the end, and wanted it quickly.

But suddenly, just as Avery's peripheral gaze turned away from the fight, he heard a resounding crack.

"Shit, shit, shit!" It was Rad's voice, frighteningly weak.

Oh no. Dazzle was really going...overboard.

But before there was a chance to worry any more about Rad, out of the corner of his eye, he saw that familiar purple jumpsuitor sliding past him. Suddenly Avery felt the hard prick...

...of a syringe.

The feral feelings immediately left Avery again. Right on cue. He noticed Dazzle lying on the floor, unconscious. Rad must have hit him with the butt of the gun.

Chrysalis skittered up from the ground, none the worse for wear except for a patch of hair missing off the back of her head. She staggered around like a drunk, holding her neck steady with both hands, like it couldn't support her head.

"I am so sorry, Officer Tate!" Avery's own mop of red hair fell guiltily into his face. He bit his knuckle with a nervous smile. Hard, to punish himself.

Chrysalis shook her head, which of course made her wince.

Avery backed up to give everyone space, but the wall was kind of right-there. Still giggling nervously, he slammed into it. He yelped, and patted the wall as if to apologize to it, too.

"Officer Tate, I promise I'll make this up to you! I'll, um, set you up with my Balinese masseuse, and my acupuncturist, and my holistic therapist...and, my _wigmaker_!

"Avery—" Chyrsalis tried to shake her head again but was cut short by the pain.

"Her name is, drumroll please"—nobody did, it was dead silence—"Tszuj Abramowitz! Like, the Tszuj Abramowitz, you've heard of her, right? The famous perruquier? 'Perruquier' is just a fancy name for wigmaker. Isn't that...funny..."

"Are you speaking English?" Rad said.

"For the most part," Avery smiled brightly. "Oh my God, Rad, thank you for finding a way to not kill me!"

Gushing with gratefulness (and overcompensating for the distinct air of awkwardness, disgust, and fear), Avery pulled Rad into a hug. Rad whimpered and wormed the gun between them.

"No...you...I hate you!" Rad whimpered through shivering teeth.

Avery nodded his way to tears. Rad turned to help Chrysalis — he tried to call 911 on his giant brick of a cell phone, but Chrysalis insisted she was fine, brave of face and stiff of neck. (Plus, it turned out the phone was dead anyway, because its battery life was only half an hour before it needed to be charged for ten.)

"I'm fine," Chrysalis said shakily, not very reassuring.

"You're not fine!" A pause before Rad amended, "Well, I mean, you're a super-fine lady and all—"

Chrysalis sighed so deeply, something shifted and made a loud popping sound.

"No!" Rad screeched, his big hands flying protectively, but lightly, to her shoulders. It made sense that he was worried. Obviously.

But something about that very fact, how natural it was, how stinking natural the scene and image was, of this man doting on this woman, his friend, his friend he loved, his friend he was definitely in love with...and it wasn't returned, maybe. But, if anything ever happened to her, Rad wouldn't know what to do with himself. It was too perfect. Gallingly perfect. This friend. This...woman.

Avery had never felt stupider. And that was saying a lot.

Resentfully watching Rad and Chrysalis together (like it was a telenovela he couldn't tear himself away from), Avery splayed himself out on the couch on his stomach, kneecaps digging into the armrest. His cheek was suctioned against sticky cold leathery Naugahyde. His tears filled up a tiny well created by a button tuft.

Suddenly, Chrysalis drew back from Rad, smiling.

"Hey...I think it actually popped back into place!" She rolled her neck. "Whatever was out of place...ligament was probably just stretched, not torn."

She gently shrugged Rad's hands off her shoulders, but was still beaming at him. His tiny little ponytail was out, which didn't make much difference in how his hair looked, except that his bouffant was deflated on one side of his head.

Avery felt...strange. But not the mind-control strange. Just...a feeling that he couldn't place as "good" or "bad," only extreme. The feeling was preoccupying, singular, and extremely galvanizing, actionable, like a fist being made inside his brain.

He realized the feeling was power.

He flew up off the couch in a kinetic fit and grabbed the gallon of bleach. Then, he withdrew from his jeans pocket...a gigantic crazy straw. The one he never went anywhere without, because it was just too fun watching liquids travel slowly through little loop-the-loops. His fingers fumbled and shook as he once again tried to find the end of the straw somewhere in the tangle. Tried to find the end. The last straw...

"Wait!" Rad's eyes bulged as the straw turned dark on the bottom and the darkness grew.

A faint and sickly chlorine smell drifted through the air as the bleach left the bottle and continued to make a bee-line towards Avery's lips. The smell stirred Dazzle, who of course was still lying on the ground.

"Stop!" Chrysalis called out, but her neck pain came rushing back, leaving her incapacitated.

Avery half expected Rad to go help her again, but–

"Quit sucking on it!" Rad yelled.

"That's...that's what he said..." Dazzle chimed in.

Dazzle raised his arm in a feeble fist pump. Chrysalis groaned from the pain in her neck, or from Dazzle being a pain in the neck.

Avery tasted the bleach on his lips, and for a second it tasted smooth, feeding his mania.

"Yuck!" he exclaimed, his voice echoing loud and painful in his ears.

Rad tackled Avery hard and awkwardly, spilling bleach all over the floor. They both slipped on it and tumbled onto the couch. Avery's faux-police leather uniform squeaked against the cold Naugahyde. Rad stayed on top of him, his knee firmly lodged between Avery's thighs. He wrested Avery's arms down, but Avery didn't know what exactly he was reaching for. Rad's lined green eyes were dark, his heavy brows in a black cloud.

The bleach smell was really strong...ammonia-like...an opiated kind of smell that made Avery feel even more intoxicated and faint.

"Hey Chrys, are you getting this? Because I expect a full report when I can lift my head up again," Dazzle quipped.

"I can't lift my head up, either!" said Chrysalis.

"That's a shame. Somebody needs to remember this homo-ment for all of posterior-ity."

The bad pun faded away to black.

 

* * *

 

"Hello? Hello? There's someone here to see you."

Avery snapped awake for what felt like the first time in days, but it was more likely he'd been in and out of consciousness, like in a post-anesthesia situation, based on the "Hello? Hello?"

"I don't really feel like—" he began to reply to the disembodied voice.

But then, the guest came into view. At first all Avery saw was hair, hung limply over a forehead, in a curly pompadour that was as blue as could be. On a lesser star it would have looked like an SOS pad...but this wasn't a lesser star.

It was Appliqué Johnson.


End file.
